On June 25, 2013 the New York State Police at Liberty arrested John Irby, age 33, for Unlawful Imprisonment in the first degree, Reckless Endangerment in the first degree, Assault in the third degree and Endangering the Welfare of a Child.

State Police received several phone calls regarding the possible abduction of a female from the area of State Route 55 in Swan Lake. Troopers and deputies from the Sullivan County Sheriff’s Office responded to the area where witnesses stated that they observed a male subject dragging a screaming female into a vehicle that then fled the area at a high rate of speed. A search for the vehicle, a 2002 Oldsmobile began. A short time later, the vehicle was spotted on Stanton Corners Road in the Town of Liberty by a plainclothes member of the Sheriff’s Office. Marked State Police units were successful in stopping the vehicle and the operator, John Irby, was taken into custody. A female subject and two children were located in the vehicle. The female was taken to Catskill Regional Medical Center and treated for non-life threatening injuries sustained when she jumped from the moving vehicle at one point during the incident.

Irby was arraigned in the Town of Liberty Court and remanded to the Sullivan County
Jail with no bail set.

(YWN Catskills Newsroom)