Police have arrested a third suspect in the recently reported Spring Break gang rape that occurred on Panama City Beach between March 10 and 12.
According to CNN, the Bay County Sheriff's Office (BCSO) announced the arrest of George Davon Kennedy Wednesday. BCSO learned that Kennedy may have been in DeKalb County, Georgia and reached out to local authorities to apprehend him.
DeKalb Sheriff's deputies arrested Kennedy, a student at Middle Tennessee State University, around 11 p.m. Tuesday. The BCSO have already arrested Ryan Calhoun and Delonte Martistee, students at Troy University, and charged them with sexual battery by multiple perpetrators. Kennedy now shares that charge.
The BCSO previously obtained footage taken on Panama City Beach sometime between March 10 and 12 showing multiple men sexually violating an apparently incapacitated woman in plain sight of hundreds of eyewitnesses. Police released an edited version of the video to depict how crowded the beach was at the time, especially in the area where this crime occurred.
Authorities said the victim did not report the crime right away because she did not believe she could recall enough of it, CNN reported. She eventually saw the video, recognizing herself by key physical traits, and contacted the authorities. Investigators said her story is consistent with a victim who was drugged.
Troy University has suspended both Calhoun and Martistee on a temporary basis pending an investigation for breaching the "university's standards of conduct and disciplinary procedures." Martistee was also a track runner at Troy and has been dismissed from the team.
"There's hundreds, hundreds of people standing there - watching, looking, seeing, hearing what's going on," McKeithen said at a press conference at the time of the first two arrests. "And yet our culture and our society and our young people have got to the point where obviously this is acceptable somewhere. I will tell you it is not acceptable in Bay County."
