6 Sexual Assaults Reported During First Week at Daytona Beach Spring Break

Daytona Beach authorities have received reports of 6 sexual assaults during the first week of Spring Break 2010. Detectives were called by a 37 year old woman to reported that she was grabbed by her hair by a unidentified male while walking to the restroom at the newly renovated Ocean Center and pulled into a men’s bathroom stall where she was sexually assaulted. The attack occurred sometime after 4:00 p.m. in broad daylight.

It is common for sexual assaults to increase during the Spring Break month of March. “All of last year we had a total of 41 sexual assaults,” Police Chief Mike Chitwood said Tuesday. “Here we have six in one week.”

In an unrelated incident, Daytona Beach police arrested a rape suspect in another incident that involved heavy drinking. The suspect is accused of raping a Spring Breaker at the Plaza Resort & Spa, on North Atlantic Ave. According to an arrest report, the suspect engaged in sex with a woman who was unconscious because she was drunk. The suspect admitted to investigators the woman was already drunk when he met her earlier in the day on March 14. He said he decided to buy her more booze and then had sex with her at least twice in two different hallways of the hotel, an arrest report states.

The other four rapes occurred at another hotel, behind a popular beachfront restaurant and one on the mainland after a woman met a man at a nightclub and invited him over, the chief said.