Six rapes in one week in Daytona Beach; police say alcohol, drugs a factor in most
ORLANDO (MCT) — A half-dozen rapes were reported during the first week of Spring Break in Daytona Beach, police Chief Mike Chitwood said Wednesday.
In five of the cases, drug or alcohol use was a factor, Chitwood said, and half of the victims were unconscious when assaulted.
There has been one arrest and there is a suspect in another case. Both cases involve victims who were unconscious when assaulted.
And in some of the rapes reported in Daytona Beach, including a 14-year-old girl, an 18-year-old from Florida woman and a 21-year-old woman from Indiana, the victims would not cooperate with investigators.
In a case where a suspect has been identified, a 20-year-old Ormond Beach, Fla., woman told police she met him outside a nightclub where she had been drinking and using the anti-anxiety drug Xanax. She told police she was naked when she awakened in the man’s bed and he told her they had sex the night before.
One of the six rapes is under investigation by the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office because it occurred on the beach near the Ocean deck, which is in the jurisdiction of the Volusia County Beach Patrol. Sheriff’s spokesman Gary Davidson said the victim was an 18-year-old Port Charlotte, Fla., woman. “Our victim had been drinking heavily, but was not unconscious,” he said.
In one case, a woman was not intoxicated when assaulted. It happened Sunday at the Ocean Center, a convention and entertainment complex, where the 37-year-old woman was walking to a restroom when a man grabbed her arm, pulled her into a men’s restroom and raped her in one of the stalls.
Police said they have little to go on. There were no surveillance cameras in the area and the victim told investigators she does not think she could identify her attacker if a suspect was picked up.
If there were six rapes reported, there were probably many more that weren’t, Chitwood said.
“I can’t tell you how many of these incidents aren’t reported,” he said. Among the reasons women don’t report the crimes are embarrassment and not wanting their family to find out, he said.
Chitwood said he has increased patrols, but also said his agency is dealing with crowds that are about 30 percent greater than recent years. “It caught us by surprise,” he said. “We were not expecting to get the number we’re getting.”
And the crowd includes people who flock to events such as Spring Break because they know there are victims whom they can prey on, whether their crime of choice is theft or sexual assault, he said.
Women shouldn’t put themselves in the position to be victims, he said. They should try stay in the company of friends and never leave with someone they just met, he said.
