A gas station trip on Hilton Head Island ended in a bloody beating after a bicyclist was attacked by two men outside a Circle K over Labor Day weekend. The Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office is searching for two men involved in the “assault by mob,” which only ended after intervention from a good Samaritan on a cigarette run.
A Beaufort County deputy arrived around 9 p.m. Friday at the Circle K convenience store on Lagoon Road, located a quarter-mile from Coligny Beach Park. There they found a 45-year-old islander whose face was reportedly disfigured, “covered in blood” and already swollen. The officer noted “there was too much blood on his face to determine where everything came from” but was able to spot an approximately 1-inch gash near the man’s right eye.
The man told police he was walking his bicycle in front of the gas station when two men approached him. One grabbed his bike and said “I just wanna talk to ya” while the other repeated the question “You remember me?” in a raised voice, according to a sheriff’s office incident report.
One of the men then struck the bicyclist, bringing him to the ground in front of the store, he told police. The pair began punching and kicking him.
A witness who was entering the convenience store to buy cigarettes told the deputy he saw the victim being attacked by two white males, with one shoving him to the ground and the other delivering closed punches and a “soccer ball kick” to the man’s face. He tried yelling at the men to stop but eventually had to pull away the primary aggressor to put an end to the assault, the report says.
Surveillance footage from the Circle K cameras corroborated the version of events detailed by the victim and witness. The video showed the two suspects exiting a red Ford SUV and “congregating for a short period” in the parking lot before driving away, later returning on foot to assault the man. After the man was pushed to the ground, one of the attackers was seen punching him multiple times before delivering three “deliberate power kicks” to his head, the deputy wrote.
The victim told police the attack was likely fueled by a “joke or comment” he made to one of the suspects’ romantic partners about eight months ago. He reportedly had not seen the man again until that night.
EMS crews on scene said the victim would likely need several stitches, although he refused to be taken to the hospital.
Both the victim and the witness positively identified one of the suspects, although the man was not publicly named by police. Investigators later obtained an arrest warrant for second-degree assault and battery by mob, a charge applied when a group of two or more people inflict “serious bodily injury” to another person.
The Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office had not yet identified the second suspect, according to spokesperson Master Sgt. Danny Allen. Neither man had been arrested as of Thursday afternoon.
