A 13-year-old boy walking with his parents along the Daytona Beach Boardwalk had his neck slashed with a box cutter on Valentine’s Day by a registered sex offender who had been released from jail just days earlier.
Sullivan Clarke had just spent the day at the Daytona International Speedway and was heading back to his hotel with his parents when the attack unfolded.
He was on the phone as he walked ahead of them near the busy beachfront strip.
His mother Lori watched a man step toward her son and swipe a blade across his neck without warning.
“I thought he was stealing Sully’s phone,” Lori told FOX 35 Orlando. “As soon as he slashed him, I yelled and I said ‘Hey!’”
Sullivan’s father Jerod said the family realized the severity of the wound within seconds.
They saw their son’s neck “gashed wide open,” he recounted.
Doctors later told the family the cut missed being fatal by a single millimeter. Sullivan required 13 stitches to close the wound.
“The crazy thing is, I turned at the perfect time because I was on the phone and I happened to be looking up at the slingshot [ride] and I turned,” Sullivan explained.
“That’s how he got the side of my neck and not right [in the center],” he said, noting that the blade narrowly avoided his jugular vein.
Police identified the suspect as 44-year-old Jermaine Lynn Long of Daytona Beach. Authorities located Long hiding near an overpass by the pier.
Investigators believe he had assaulted another man with a sledgehammer roughly 20 minutes before attacking Sullivan.
Jerod Clarke blasted the circumstances that allowed the suspect back on the street.
“This guy, this is totally unacceptable,” he told FOX News’ Laura Ingraham. “… My son, we wouldn’t even be sitting here right now. It’s totally unacceptable. If I’m at 7-Eleven wheeling a hammer around, I guarantee the least of my concerns is getting arrested.”
Long faces two counts of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, according to Volusia County Jail records.
A judge granted him a $50,000 surety bond. Jail records show Long had been released four days before the Valentine’s Day attack.
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He previously faced January charges for allegedly assaulting two men with a knife and an eight-foot pole.
Those charges included aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and touching or striking another person.
Prosecutors did not pursue those earlier charges. Court records reflect a lengthy criminal history.
In October 2022 he was arrested for refusing to leave public property.
Later that month he faced charges of battery, possession of paraphernalia, possession of a Schedule II substance, introducing contraband into a detention facility and resisting a transit agent while committing theft.
In March 2023 he was arrested for failure of a sex offender to properly register and again for refusing to leave public property.
He was also arrested in September 2025 for petit theft. In October 2025 he faced charges of possession of paraphernalia and possession of a controlled substance without a prescription.
In December 2025 he was again charged with refusing to leave public property.
Lori Clarke said she was stunned that Long had repeatedly returned to the streets.
“He’s fallen through the cracks so many times,” she said. “We know that the state of Florida can do better and that we are going to put this horrible pervert away forever.”
“He was only 11 feet away from me when this happened, maybe 12 feet. It’s absolutely horrifying. He’s had nightmares. … His little brother, who’s 11, who saw everything as well, seeing his brother’s neck split open … there might be some trauma, and we’re very upset.”
The Daytona Beach assault comes amid other violent attacks on Florida shores.
In Stuart, a 26-year-old Venezuelan national was arrested after authorities say he attempted to drown a woman late one evening on Tiger Shore Beach.
Said Alexander Hernandez-Gonzalez allegedly approached the woman from behind as she spoke on the phone with a relative around 11 p.m.
Investigators say he struck her, forced her into the water and tried to hold her under.
Sheriff John Budensiek described how the woman fought to survive.
“She was trying to time her breaths, pick her head up, get a breath, but he continued to fight with her until she went unconscious,” Budensiek said. “The next thing she recalled was waking up half in and half out of the water.”
Authorities say Hernandez-Gonzalez believed the woman was dead before he left.
“He made statements indicating she made him angry, so he attacked her and drowned her,” police said. “He stopped when he believed she was dead. He then went to his vehicle, smoked marijuana, drank vodka, and left the scene.”
The victim later walked roughly a mile to Stuart Beach and located a deputy. Her face and neck were already bruising.
Deputies searched for two days before another agency reported a suicidal man who claimed he had murdered someone on the beach.
Hernandez-Gonzalez has been charged with attempted murder and faces an immigration detainer. He allegedly told officers, “No, I don’t feel nothing.”
The woman and the suspect had no prior interaction. “She did many of the right things – she was on the phone, her husband knew where she was – but you never know who you’re dealing with,” Budensiek said. “This is an extremely alarming case.”
In Miami Beach, another man survived a near-fatal throat slashing months earlier.
Police arrested 24-year-old Jack Daniel Gutierrez in January in connection with a brutal October attack.
The victim told officers he had been sitting near a closed lifeguard tower just before 1 a.m. when a stranger approached him.
The man asked for a cigarette and then asked to use the victim’s phone.
When the victim refused, the man walked away and then returned to attack.
Police spokesman Christopher Bess described the escalation.
“Our victim was trying to enjoy a night out on the beach where he was approached by our offender. Our offender asked him to utilize his cell phone. The victim declined and what happened next, none of us could have imagined,” Bess said.
The suspect allegedly tackled the victim and held a knife to his neck.
The victim felt a puncture and then experienced what he described as a “heavy volume of blood pouring from his neck.”
Officers found him with a laceration stretching “from ear to ear” and rushed him to Jackson Memorial Hospital’s Ryder Trauma Center.
Surveillance footage led investigators to Gutierrez. The victim later identified him in a photo lineup.
Gutierrez, who was on probation for an unrelated weapons charge, was arrested at a probation office.
A judge ordered him held without bond after appointing a public defender.
