JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Investigators with the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office are looking for a woman who was battered by a man outside the Jacksonville Landing prior to a hit-and-run crash in the parking lot across the street.
The battery occurred between midnight and 2 a.m. Friday, police said.
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Investigators said they would like to speak to the woman who was the victim of the battery. Police believe she may be a witness to the hit-and-run accident that left a 22-year-old man in critical condition. Police said it does not appear that the woman filed a police report in reference to the battery.
Fights broke out after a crowd left the country bar Mavericks Rock N' Honky Tonk about 2:15 a.m. Friday, and one man ended up driving over another, according to witnesses. Friends of the man run over identify him as Taylor Evans, who's clinging to life at Shands Jacksonville Medical Center.
"We were just walking, holding hands because we were best friends having fun, and there was a bunch of raucous going on with other groups of people," Evans' friend Alexandra Melendez said. "All the sudden I'm looking for my car, I heard a big screech and slam, and I look over to the right two seconds later and Taylor was laying on the ground in a puddle of blood."
Police said there were several fights at Mavericks that continued into the parking lot a few hundred yards away. That's when witnesses told officers a man hit and then ran over Evans. Evans' friends said he was an innocent bystander.
"Taylor wasn't fighting, Taylor wasn't doing anything wrong," Melendez said. "Taylor was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time."
Witnesses told police the man who hit Evans sped off in his white pickup truck. They said he hit other cars along the way. Someone else chased him, and witnesses say stopped him at gunpoint. Then police caught up and took the man in for questioning.
Police said they have not yet made any arrests.
Anyone with any information about this case is asked to call the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office at 904-630-0500 or Crime Stoppers at 866-845-TIPS.