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Ryan Foley, 25, of Scranton, arrested in attack on the Rev. Francis Landry at St. Ann’s.
Foley
SCRANTON – City police said a man high on legal bath salts broke into St. Ann’s Monastery in West Scranton early Wednesday morning and attacked a priest, cutting his hand and face.
At 2:42 a.m., police responded to a report of an assault in progress at 1233 St. Ann St., according to Police Chief Dan Duffy. Officers took Ryan Foley, 25, of Cornell Street, Scranton, into custody inside the monastery for an alleged attack on the Rev. Francis Landry.
“He never made it out of the building,” Duffy said of Foley.
However, police weren’t sure how Foley got into the monastery in the first place.
“It’s completely secure,” Scranton police Detective Jennifer Gerrity said. “We have no idea how he gained entry.”
Foley faces one count each of burglary, simple assault, criminal trespassing and providing false identification to law enforcement and two counts of aggravated assault.
According to an affidavit:
Landry told police he awoke to find a silhouette of a person in his room.. He said that when he went to remove a blanket, the person, allegedly Foley, attacked him. When Landry screamed for help, Foley left the room and closed the door behind him.
As he tried to leave the monastery, Foley allegedly saw Scranton police Sgt. Thomas Carroll. He then went back inside and pulled a fire alarm in the monastery, according to Duffy.
When Foley was interviewed at police headquarters just after 7 a.m., police said he told them he believed it was 2008 and he was living on Blakely Street in Dunmore. He said he and a friend, Corey Robbins, had gone to Taylor to pick up belongings at Robbins’ former spouse’s home.
Foley claimed the pair were followed by “four or five cars that tried to run them off the road.” Back inside Robbins’ residence, he barricaded the doors of the apartment with furniture.
Police said Robbins told them he “saw Foley run out of the apartment wearing jeans, more than one hooded sweatshirt, a ski mask, and holding a wooden object” just after 2 a.m. Police said they believe a wooden mallet and a knife were used in the attack.
Duffy said Landry’s injuries were not life threatening. According to an affidavit, he had a “severe laceration to his left hand and wounds to his nose and forehead.”
The Rev. Ed Deviney told parishioners at an 8:30 a.m. Mass at St. Ann’s that Landry had returned home and was resting at the monastery after being treated at Community Medical Center.
According to an affidavit, Foley and Robbins had snorted bath salts “approximately four times” Tuesday evening. Bath salts mimic the effects of cocaine and methamphetamine, but are not a banned substance.
Duffy said paranoia and delusions generated by abusing the salts can go on for days and the high is “consistent with someone who would be under the influence of methamphetamine.”
“Other states have been faced with a meth epidemic. I’ve been saying for a while that bath salts are our version of meth here. It’s becoming a problem for us. The worst thing about it is there’s nothing we can charge in regards to this particular substance,” Duffy said.
Foley was arraigned Wednesday and held for $100,000 bail. A preliminary hearing is set for March 16 at 10:45 a.m.
Go Lackawanna correspondent Stephanie Longo contributed to this report.