Tiger Bay Bonfire Beating: Four Arrested After a Disabled Man Was Attacked for 30 Minutes

Patrol Blog · 6 November 2026 · Reading time: about 6 minutes

Booking photos, left to right: Sabastian Bowers, Cody Stripling, Logan Levesque and Casey Knight. Volusia County Corrections, via the Volusia Sheriff's Office.

The Tiger Bay bonfire beating started with a young man sitting on the tailgate of a pickup truck, waiting for his friend to come back. It ended, deputies say, with that same young man pulled to the ground, spit on, slapped, punched, kicked and choked — while somebody held a phone up and told him to smile.

Four men from Port Orange are now charged in the attack. All four are in the Volusia County Branch Jail, held without bond. The charges are allegations, not convictions, and every man named here is presumed innocent unless a court proves otherwise. What follows is the record as the Volusia Sheriff's Office and the courts have put it out so far — the event happened on October 23, 2026, and this account was verified on November 6, 2026.

What happened in Tiger Bay State Forest

The victim is 19. Deputies describe a clearly visible birth defect on his right hand that leaves him with limited use of that hand — a man who, in the sheriff's words at his November 5 press conference, basically has one working arm. He is not named here, and he was not named by deputies.

He went to the bonfire in Tiger Bay State Forest, near Daytona Beach, on the night of October 22 with a friend. The arrest report says he felt uncomfortable around people he did not know and stayed in his friend's truck for about an hour before joining the party. Then his friend left — driving some partygoers home and picking up others — and the 19-year-old waited on the tailgate.

That is when, investigators say, Sabastian Bowers and Cody Stripling approached him and began mocking him. Cellphone video from the scene shows him pulled off the tailgate and then spit on, slapped, punched and kicked repeatedly. Deputies say one attacker put him in a chokehold. The released video shows him not fighting back, shows the men hugging each other afterward as if they had won something, and catches the person filming telling the bleeding young man to smile for the camera and not to touch the phone.

He told deputies the attack lasted roughly 30 to 40 minutes. It stopped when his friend came back, found Stripling holding him in a chokehold, pulled the attacker off and got him out of there.

Doctors found a concussion, along with cuts, bruising and swelling to his face, arms and back. Sheriff Mike Chitwood says he is expected to recover. He got medical treatment first — then he reported the attack to the Sheriff's Office, and the investigation started with the video itself, which investigators say had already circulated on Snapchat.

The four arrested

Deputies made the first arrests on October 31 — Bowers and Stripling. On November 4, they arrested Logan Levesque and Casey Knight, bringing the Florida bonfire beating arrests to four. Investigators say Knight is the man who recorded the attack. According to court records and the Volusia County booking page, all four face the same three charges, and all four were being held without bond on November 5.

All four are of Port Orange, Florida. Each is charged with aggravated abuse of an elderly person or disabled adult, aggravated battery and battery by strangulation.

Sabastian Kenneth Bowers, 19

Booking photo — Volusia County Corrections.

Arrested October 31, 2026. Deputies say Bowers was one of the two men who first approached the victim on the tailgate and started the mocking that turned into the beating. Charged with aggravated abuse of an elderly person or disabled adult, aggravated battery and battery by strangulation. Held without bond.

Cody Michael Stripling, 18

Booking photo — Volusia County Corrections.

Arrested October 31, 2026. Deputies say Stripling approached the victim with Bowers and joined the attack. The victim's friend told investigators he came back to find Stripling holding the victim in a chokehold. Charged with aggravated abuse of an elderly person or disabled adult, aggravated battery and battery by strangulation. Held without bond.

Logan Levesque, 18

Booking photo — Volusia County Corrections.

Arrested November 4, 2026, as the investigation widened beyond the two men first named. Charged with aggravated abuse of an elderly person or disabled adult, aggravated battery and battery by strangulation. Held without bond.

Casey Knight, 19

Booking photo — Volusia County Corrections.

Arrested November 4, 2026. Investigators say Knight is the man who recorded the attack on his phone — the footage that became the case's central evidence. He faces the same three charges as the men he filmed: aggravated abuse of an elderly person or disabled adult, aggravated battery and battery by strangulation. Held without bond.

What officials say — and the claim that does not hold up

Sheriff Chitwood did not soften it. Announcing the first two arrests on October 31, his office wrote: "Congratulations to our new Scumbags of the Weekend, Cody Stripling (18) and Sebastian Bowers (19). If you're a decent person, this video will disturb you. Obviously it didn't bother Cody or Sebastian."

Deputies called the attack unprovoked, and the victim told them he did nothing to start it. There is one claim floating the other way: the victim's friend, asking around afterward, was told the group attacked because the 19-year-old had "insulted and brushed up against an unidentified party-goer." Deputies have not established that as fact, and it would explain nothing if it were true — a brush and a remark do not answer for 30 to 40 minutes of beating a man who cannot properly defend himself, on camera.

On November 5, Chitwood turned on the bystanders: people stood there, filmed it, and treated a disabled man's beating as entertainment. His office says it is now working with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission to keep watch on the remote spots where these woods parties gather.

The charges, in plain English

Each man is charged with aggravated abuse of a disabled adult — in the court's fuller wording, aggravated abuse of an elderly person or disabled adult. Florida treats that charge as a first-degree felony because the victim's disability is the point of it: the law answers hardest when the person attacked is someone the attacker knew could not fight back on equal terms. A conviction can carry up to 30 years.

Aggravated battery means a battery — an intentional, unwanted striking — done in a way the law grades as more serious, here charged with bodily harm. Battery by strangulation is its own charge: cutting off a person's breathing or blood flow by pressure to the neck. It exists as a separate count because a chokehold is not a punch; it is a hand on the off switch, and Florida law counts it that way.

Three felony counts each. Four men. No bond. That is the state of the case.

What is still unknown

Nobody has said how many people were at that bonfire, and deputies have not announced whether more arrests are coming. No motive has been officially established. No pleas or trial dates have been reported. The full video has not been released — only the portion the Sheriff's Office chose to put out — and the investigation is still open.

What is known is enough. A Volusia County disabled man beaten at a party he almost did not get out of the truck for, by men who filmed the worst of it themselves. The Patrol's position is the simple one: the record is the record, the arrests were done by the book and in the open — body cameras rolling — and now the case belongs to the court. The officer's beat is set out on the About page. Patrolling the online borders, one tether at a time.