The mother of a Jacksonville Beach teen who suffered facial injuries after allegedly being punched from behind the day before leaving for boot camp said she wants accountability for his assailants.
“He’s in a lot of pain and he’s frustrated,” Kristy MaGisty told The Citizen. “His feelings are hurt because they weren’t doing anything wrong in the first place and were completely blindsided.
She added, “I’m so grateful that he’s alive.”
According to MaGisty, Carson Tucker, 18, had met up with some friends on 1st Street North on Oct. 6 around 2 a.m. to bid them farewell before leaving to begin his military career.
MaGisty said a man approached the group “out of nowhere” and bumped into the 13-year-old brother of one of Tucker’s friends. After the boy’s 17-year-old brother objected to the shove, the man punched the brother in the head.
MaGisty said her son was then hit in the back of the head from behind by the younger of the two attackers, causing him to fall face first on the ground and leaving him with a badly mangled mouth.
Tucker lost a tooth, could lose another and is on a liquid diet due to his injuries, she said, adding that his eyes are still swollen and he has a knot in the back of his head.
The injuries compelled Tucker to delay his departure to boot camp until Oct. 21, she said.
MaGisty said her son doesn’t have health insurance, and that he can’t afford more tests to determine whether he sustained additional damage to his skull or jaw.
Tucker’s enraged aunt, digital creator and influencer Hillary Shuman, launched a GoFundMe campaign that has raised nearly $7,000, which has helped pay for his dental work, including a partial denture.
She has doggedly agitated for an arrest online, and told The Citizen that she wants Tucker’s attackers to be taken into custody. She and her sister said they were able to identify the alleged assailants, who are brothers, from photos Tucker’s friend took as the skirmish unfolded.
According to an Oct. 6 Jacksonville Beach police officer’s incident report, a group of teenagers “ran up to my window indicating the victim was battered and suffered injuries.”
A bloodied Tucker told the officer that he and his friends were standing on the sidewalk when a “fight broke out with another group,” the papers state.
He said he was “sucker punched in the back of the head, causing him to fall.” Witnesses told police the assailant fled in a white Dodge pickup truck toward the Metropolitan parking garage.
The officer pursued the truck and allegedly encountered Tucker and his friends near the garage looking for their nemeses to even the score, the report says.
“I stopped them and directed them back down the ramp using a firm tone telling them their vigilante mob mentality was unwelcome and could hamper my investigation,” the officer wrote.
Police identified a local bar staffer as a person of interest at the scene after the suspect “instigated an unrelated disturbance with a group at the parking garage,” the report says.
But an “independent adult witness” was asked to do a “show up” at the scene and said the suspect was not the the man who punched Carson, according to police.
MaGisty questioned why police didn’t ask her son, who was still present, to identify his assailant. “Why wouldn’t they bring my son over there and say, ‘Is this him?'”
No arrests have been made, and The Citizen is withholding the names of the alleged suspects.
The case is still ongoing.
The incident took place just steps from the scene of another violent Jacksonville Beach incident that left a local man with severe head injuries.
Seth Agwunobi, a former quarterback for Temple University, allegedly threw Connolly Byrnes over a barricade outside Mango’s Beach Bar, causing him to land on his head.
Felony battery charges are still pending against Agwunobi.
