INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — For two men, jail was a revolving door with one man spending just 54 minutes behind bars. For their victim Kenny Pelletier, life wasn’t so forgiving. Pelletier, a mentally impaired homeless man, was knocked unconscious after being sucker-punched across his jaw.
The two men accused of the Pelletier assault videotaped it and then posted the violent, senseless attack on Facebook in late September.
The video went viral in early December when the Indian River County Sheriff’s Office announced the arrests of William Gregory, 30, and Nicholas Marr, 26, on felony assault charges because Pelletier is disabled.
By the time the press statement was issued on Gregory and Marr, their time behind bars was long over.
At about the same time, Pelletier, upset over the video, got drunk and spent 12 days in jail because he couldn’t come up with the money to pay a $500 bond on his misdemeanor public intoxication charge.
Gregory spent 3 hours in 16 minutes in jail while Marr spent less than an hour behind bars. Warrants had been issued days earlier for the duo, apparently giving them enough time to get money to pay 10 percent of their $9,500 and $8,500 bonds, respectively, to bail out of jail.
Through much of December, Pelletier slept not in the woods off Old Dixie Highway where he usually camps but among 425 or so jail inmates. From evening of Dec. 9 through late in the evening on Dec. 20, Pelletier slept in a small cell and lined up for chow or a shower when told.
Finally, just five days before Christmas, the State Attorney’s Office dropped the misdemeanor public drunkenness charge.
Pelletier was free to go back to life of spending the nights in the woods and his days at the Christian Ministry The Source where he volunteers by working in the kitchen typically from open to close each day.
Pelletier’s story illustrates a series of pervasive problems in the United States: Able body adults who prey on people who are clearly intellectually challenged. In the Pelletier case, the suspects took the victim’s humiliation one step further and posted the incident on the internet.
When Pelletier was arrested Dec. 9 on the intoxication charge, records say, he told police he was tired of his life and where it was heading. He was embarrassed and upset people would link him to the blurred video the Indian River County Sheriff’s Office sent out earlier about his beating Sept. 30.
Nearly 2 1/2 months after that beating, deputies arrested Marr and Gregory.
Pelletier, 32, a 135-pound mentally disabled homeless man, was filmed being struck in the jaw with such a powerful blow from Marr that he dropped to the ground unconscious.
The Facebook video showed an equally disturbing image of Gregory walking over to Pelletier and kicking the unconscious victim in the side in what appeared to be an attempt to see if he was alive.
Marr and Gregory – along with two women and four men who witnessed the attack – quickly left the scene, a median strip in the parking lot near the Majestic Theatre on U.S. 1.
Pelletier was out cold.
The following day, after Pelletier’s image with his hands bound behind his back was posted on Facebook, someone alerted a Sheriff’s deputy about the video. The deputy went to The Source, a local ministry that helps homeless people to find out if officials there knew the man being punched.
They did. Pelletier was volunteering in the agency’s kitchen that day like he has done for the past 20 months.
For two months after the video was posted, investigators and a behavior specialist interviewed and evaluated Pelletier. Eventually, they built strong cases against Marr and Gregory, arresting them on felony charges.
The incident prompted disgust at the suspects’ actions.
“It just blows my mind that things like this are possible,” said Lalita Janke, a barrier island resident and homeless advocate who has donated tens of thousands of dollars to Camp Haven, a planned homeless shelter that was initiated by The Source. “For people to do that and to be so stupid and gloat about it by putting it out there on (social) media. How sick do you have to be to draw attention to yourself in this way?”
Deputies think they know exactly what happened: Sometime between midnight and 2 a.m. on Sept. 30 Pelletier agreed to let the men slap him in the face for $20.
The Facebook video ¬– posted from a cell phone – showed Pelletier standing straight with his hands behind his back as Marr prepares him by showing him his palm and describing what he is going to do. Audio on the video suggests a large group goaded Marr before he drew his arm back and threw his punch at Pelletier.
“Why would anyone hit him in the first place? One look at him and you can see that he is not right in the head,” said Don Corren, a fellow homeless man whose been camping out in the woods about 50 feet from Pelletier for several months. “Kenny is just a lost person and it is so sad.”
Pelletier tended to keep to himself; that is until he started drinking heavily Dec. 9.
Shoeless and dressed only in gray sweatpants, Pelletier went to Carrabba’s Italian Kitchen and caused a scene near the pick-up window. When deputies arrived, he was walking down U.S. 1 flailing his arms in a visibly upset manner.
“He was upset at life,” according to his arrest sheet.
Pelletier was carted off to jail, fingerprinted, searched, photographed and locked behind bars on misdemeanor disorderly intoxication charges.
The following day a judge set bond at $500.
Pelletier didn’t have that kind of money and so he sat in jail without a public defender, court records suggest.
On Dec. 21, Pelletier walked into The Source as if nothing had happened, said Rich Coyne, the kitchen manager. “He asked how everything was going. He then got back straight to work.”
Coyne had debated whether to ask volunteers and The Source’s few paid staff members if they wanted to pool donations and bond Pelletier out of jail by Christmas.
In the end, they didn’t have to.
The State Attorney’s Office dropped the charges against Pelletier. He was freed late in the evening on Dec. 20.
Coyne said Pelletier told he him he had been living in Orlando and walked to Vero Beach after finding his way to U.S. 1.
At The Source, Pelletier doesn’t get paid, few people do at the non-profit ministry. Coyne said Pelletier works daily from breakfast through dinner as if he’s paid.
When Janke learned about what happened to Pelletier, the homeless man was already locked away in jail. “I’m just crushed,” she said.
A Sheriff’s deputy wasn’t about to let the case go and cite Marr and Gregory on misdemeanor charges. Instead, she took the effort to find someone to evaluate Pelletier so she could bring tougher charges against the pair.
That paid off, said Sheriff’s spokesman Deputy Jeff Luther.
Deputy Jean Rosalia was about to try and collect money for the evaluation, but Luther was able to get one for Pelletier free. The results placed him at low- to borderline-intellect meeting the requirement as a disabled adult, which led to the felony charges against Marr and Gregory.
“We want people to know that this Sheriff’s Office will not tolerate this type of activity,” said Rosalia’s supervisor Michael Pierce in a prepared statement. “Simply because a person is homeless does not mean that we will not work hard to protect them from harm. After speaking with the victim Jean (Rosalia) knew that he did not have the capacity to understand what these guys were intending to do to him. She went the extra mile on this case ensuring that the victim received a proper mental health evaluation.”
