Share and Follow
What was meant to be a joyful family escape filled with sunshine, thrilling rides, and the excitement of engines at Daytona International Speedway quickly turned into a nightmare.
The holiday took a horrifying turn when a teenage boy found himself desperately clutching his neck, blood seeping through his fingers, as his mother cried out for assistance along the Daytona Beach Boardwalk.
In an exclusive conversation with the Daily Mail, 45-year-old Lori Clarke recounted the moment a peaceful Saturday evening stroll devolved into a desperate struggle to save her son.
In a heartbeat, she recalled, a man she identified as a homeless individual approached her teenage son Sullivan, affectionately called Sully, and inflicted a severe cut to his neck before vanishing into the darkness.
“This random and shocking attack has left us reeling,” Lori admitted, struggling to come to terms with the ordeal.
She also complained that the man accused of slashing her son was on the streets despite a long rap sheet.
The attack comes amid a series of seemingly random, unprovoked, deadly attacks, including the killing of a Ukrainian refugee on a train in Charlotte in September 2025, and a stabbing spree on the New York City subway in January 2025.
The Clarke family had left their beachfront hotel after a day of sightseeing and headed toward the Daytona Slingshot attraction.
Lori walked with her husband, Jerod, and their younger son. Sully trailed about 12 feet behind, glancing down at his phone.
The Clarke family, back home in Delray Beach after the shocking and random knife attack on teenage Sully
The seemingly random attack spoiled an otherwise fun family trip to Daytona Beach, Florida
That’s when Lori, of Delray Beach, noticed a man moving directly toward her son.Â
There was plenty of space on the boardwalk – yet he was zeroing in on the youth and staring at him, she said.
Her instincts kicked in. She assumed he might try to snatch the phone. She started walking faster. She never imagined he would reach for Sully’s throat.
Lori said she saw the man’s arm move toward her son’s neck. She briefly chased him, but then turned around and saw Jerod had both hands clamped around their son’s neck.
‘Call 911,’ he told her. ‘He’s cut.’
Lori hadn’t even seen a knife. She didn’t understand what had happened until she saw the blood, she said.
Sully was holding his neck, panicked. ‘Am I bleeding out?’ he asked.
His mother and younger brother tried to calm him. Lori pressed his sweatshirt hard against the wound, trying to slow the bleeding.
Emergency responders arrived quickly. Before the ambulance left, police detained a suspect and asked Lori to identify him. She said she had seen his face clearly during the approach and attack.
At the hospital, doctors delivered a chilling verdict.
‘The doctors just said, if it was one more millimeter that he would probably have died… because it’s right, very close to the jugular,’ Lori said.
The blade had missed the jugular vein by a fraction.
In a later Fox News interview, Sully said that at the exact moment of the attack, he had turned his head to glance at the Slingshot ride.
‘That’s how he got the side of my neck and not right [in the center],’ Sully said.
Instead of a fatal wound, the teen required stitches. He was discharged around 1 am, shaken but alive.
The blade missed Sully’s jugular vein by a fraction, but left him needing sticthes
Jermaine Lynn Long is accused of slashing the throat of a 13-year-old boy in Daytona BeachÂ
Sully credits his survival with turning his head to see the Slingshot ride at the moment he was attacked
Lori kept repeating the same words: it was ‘only a cut.’ But the scar on her son’s neck tells a different story – a reminder of how close they came to tragedy.
‘Sully is doing well, considering,’ she said.
‘I’d like this neck wound to recover quickly so he can get back to playing basketball… and just move forward and not live in fear of this ever happening again.’
The suspect, identified as 44-year-old Jermaine Lynn Long of Daytona Beach, was later found near an overpass on the pier.
According to Volusia County Jail records, he faces two counts of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon.
Fox News reported that Long is also suspected of striking another man with a sledgehammer roughly 20 minutes before Sully was attacked.
Jail records show he had been released just four days earlier. He also had pending charges from January, when he allegedly assaulted two men with a knife and an eight-foot pole.
Those charges – aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and touching or striking another person – were not pursued by prosecutors.
Long has a lengthy criminal history, including sex offenses. For Lori, that record raises haunting questions.
‘It was shocking’ that he was free, she said. ‘He’s fallen through the cracks so many times.’
The Clarke family’s ordeal comes amid a string of seemingly random attacks across the country.
Iryna Zarutska, a 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee, was fatally stabbed on August 22, 2025, aboard a light rail train in Charlotte.
Zarutska, who had fled the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, was sitting on the train when she was stabbed from behind three times in an unprovoked attack.
Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska (pictured) was randomly attacked on a commuter train in CharlotteÂ
Zarutska, who came to the United States in 2022 after Russia invaded her country, was senselessly killed on train in Charlotte, North Carolina
The alleged attacker has a history of schizophrenia and multiple prior arrests – and faces state and federal homicide charges.
For Lori, the randomness is the hardest part.
Now, the family is trying to reclaim normalcy. Sully is back at school. The household atmosphere is intentionally upbeat. They even make light jokes about the incident.
On the surface, Sully appears buoyant – the same basketball-loving teen as before.
But beneath that optimism, Lori worries.
‘I don’t yet know how he is going to deal with that in the future,’ she admitted.
‘Will he be scared of being in crowds, or who’s going to do something like this next?’