Las Vegas Sun

March 19, 2024

2 Alabama college students charged in spring break sexual assault on Florida beach

Spring break assault

Melissa Nelson-Gabriel/AP Photo

The beachfront Spinaker Beach Club where an alleged assault took place is seen Sunday, April 12, 2015, in Panama City, Fla. A star college athlete and a fellow classmate from Alabama’s Troy University have been suspended from the school in the wake of their arrests after authorities say they sexually assaulted a woman sometime March 10-12 at the beach while a crowd of Panama City Beach spring breakers looked on. Bay County Sheriff Frank McKeithen says a cell phone video shows several men surrounding an incapacitated woman on a beach chair, describing the recording as the “most disgusting, sickening thing” he had ever seen.

Updated Sunday, April 12, 2015 | 3:10 p.m.

Two Alabama college students were arrested Friday and charged with sexually assaulting a 19-year-old woman over spring break on a crowded Florida beach in broad daylight, law enforcement officials said.

Delonté Martistee, 22, of Bainbridge, Ga., and Ryan Austin Calhoun, 23, of Mobile, Ala., both students at Troy University, were charged with sexual battery by multiple perpetrators. They were being extradited to Bay County, Fla., where the attack occurred last month on Panama City Beach, the county’s sheriff, Frank McKeithen, said.

The woman was assaulted by three men in a “gang-rape-type attack,” the sheriff said during a news conference Friday. The authorities said they were searching for the third man in the video and also for a fourth person, but they did not specify his role in the attack.

McKeithen described the attack as “probably one of the most disgusting, repulsing, sickening things I’ve seen this year on Panama City Beach, and I’ve seen a lot of them.”

According to The Panama City News Herald, a cellphone video of the assault shows several men surrounding an incapacitated woman on a beach chair. The newspaper reported that as she tried to remove their hands from her genitals, a man could be heard saying, “she isn’t going to know.”

McKeithen said the attack was not reported to the authorities despite the presence of hundreds of bystanders. Investigators in Troy, Alabama, discovered the video of the attack while investigating a shooting.

The Troy police sent the video to the Bay County Sheriff’s Office on April 2, officials said. The authorities identified the victim and determined that the attack took place behind the Spinnaker Beach Club between March 10 and March 12, when Troy University was on spring break.

“Within 10 feet of where this happened, there’s hundreds, hundreds of people standing there watching, looking, seeing, hearing what’s going on,” McKeithen said.

The woman told sheriff’s investigators she believed she had been drugged at the time and did not remember the incident enough to report it, according to The News Herald.

Troy University said that it had suspended both students and that Martistee was removed from the track team.

McKeithen has been pushing to tamp down spring break activities that he says have made local beaches unsafe. Last week, his office held a news conference highlighting the increasing amounts of drugs and guns being confiscated during spring break. Officials said there were videos of more sexual assaults circulating on social media.

“I’m telling you, this is drawing a line in the sand for us,” McKeithen said. “We have got to get control of our beaches.”

Join the Discussion:

Check this out for a full explanation of our conversion to the LiveFyre commenting system and instructions on how to sign up for an account.

Full comments policy