This man admitted to ingesting a synthetic drug before swimming in Tempe Town Lake on Monday night. He told police a second person was in the water with him, but no one else was found.TEMPE, AZ (CBS5) -
Tempe rescuers continued to search for a possible missing swimmer after a man who admitted he was high on the synthetic drug "bath salts" told police he was swimming with a second person in Tempe Town Lake late Monday night.
Rescuers were originally called about 10:30 p.m. about two men fighting in the lake.
The man reached shore on his own and told police someone else was in the lake with him, but there was no sight or sound of a second person, according to Molly Enright of the Tempe Police Department.
The man was taken to a Tempe hospital for monitoring and was suffering from an "altered level of consciousness," Enright said.
Enright said there were about 30 rescuers at the lake and they searched for the second person through the night and into Tuesday morning, but did not know how much of what the man told police to believe.
Stormy weather was also moving in Tuesday morning, but the search was expected to continue, Enright said
She said the man who crawled out of the lake is in his 30s, but that his name could not be released because he was listed as a patient at the hospital, and had not been charged.
She said he could face charges after his release.
It was the second incident attributed to bath salts in Tempe in less than a week.
On July 18, a naked man high on bath salts was arrested on two counts of trespassing after he was seen in a Tempe neighborhood running through yards, jumping fences and throwing himself against walls, police said.
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