A man arrested in July on the Lake Sumter bridge has been found to be mentally incompetent.
Sumter County sheriff’s deputies were alerted by Community Watch at 10:20 p.m. July 15 to “a white male” who was “staggering in the middle of the road” on County Road 466 at the Morse Gate in The Villages. Community Watch reported that the man had started walking toward the Morse Boulevard bridge over Lake Sumter.
A deputy made contact with 23-year-old Cory Levi Blaine of the Villages of Parkwood, who was on the golf cart path in the middle of the bridge.
“As I was speaking with the defendant he was slurring his speech which made me believe he was impaired,” the deputy wrote in the arrest report.
The deputy asked to see Blaine’s driver’s license, but Blaine instead gave him a bank card with no name on it. When the deputy asked Blaine for his name, he began running toward Lake Sumter Landing. The deputy ordered Blaine to stop, but he kept running.
The deputy got into his patrol car and cut Blaine off about a half mile from where they first made contact. The deputy took Blaine to the ground. The deputy “could not smell any odor of an alcoholic beverage coming from his person, but he did appear to be under the influence of some sort of narcotics.” Blaine was arrested on a charge of resisting arrest and booked at the Sumter County Detention Center.
Last week, Blaine was released from the jail after the court concluded he was mentally incompetent and will not face trial.
