By Tom McNiff tom.mcniff@dailycommercial.com | 0 comments
THE VILLAGES — A Leesburg man died Tuesday, two days after a fight in a parking lot off the Spanish Springs town square in The Villages left him bloodied, broken and unconscious.
Friends of Austin Stevens, 26, say his injuries were bad, but by the time paramedics took him to the hospital he was awake and speaking, albeit somewhat incoherently. His roommate and friend, Travis Jackson, said Stevens died Tuesday from bleeding on the brain.
"The doctors said the trauma was so severe because it was simultaneously in the back of the head and the front," Jackson said Thursday. "His cheekbones were broken, he was all cut up."
Lady Lake police are investigating but as of Thursday had not made any arrests, although officials acknowledged they know who is "responsible."
While police did not release any details of the fight, a friend and co-worker of Stevens believes the culprits were four young men who had been riding around Spanish Springs Sunday night harassing locals.
Kristen Hunt said Stevens, a bartender at McCall's, was closing up around 10 p.m. while she and Stevens' girlfriend waited for him outside.
She said four young men in a white minivan rode by taunting them and calling them names. They mentioned it to Stevens when he emerged from McCall's and said he walked off a moment later. A short time after, Hunt noticed a commotion in a nearby parking lot and saw people streaming from a nearby restaurant toward the melee.
Hunt ran over and found Stevens laying on his back, his face badly bruised and blood streaming from his mouth and nose. He was unconscious.
She said three of the four young men from the van were standing there.
"They said Austin came up and started hitting them," she said, "but they had no marks on them. Then they said the guy who hit Austin ran away."
Hunt said police arrived and questioned the young men. They also questioned her but did not take her contact information to follow up. She said after a while, they determined that Stevens was the aggressor and let the young men go.
Paramedics, meanwhile, were tending to the badly injured Stevens. Hunt said he could not tell them who the president was or even tell them the present year.
Jackson, Stevens' roommate, said he visited Stevens Tuesday in the hospital, but then the injured man took a turn for the worse and died.
"When I left the hospital Tuesday, one of the first calls I made was to the police department to let them know they had a murder on their hands," he said.
While it is not clear if anyone witnessed the altercation, Stevens' friends say it is unlikely he was the aggressor, as police initially claimed.
"I guess he went to see what was going on, not to fight them, because he wasn't like that," Jackson said.
Hunt agreed, saying Stevens had a firm but gentle way of dealing with unruly patrons at McCall's, and she doubts he started the fight.
"Do I see him walking up to them and starting to swing? No," she said.
Stevens leaves behind a 6-year-old son.
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