Business Owner Beaten Outside Shop

Mount Pleasant police are investigating a brutal assault on a partner in a popular local business.

It happened Monday afternoon when a partner in the Waves beach shop on Hungryneck Boulevard was driving a large yellow box truck full of merchandise for the store.

He told police that a tall black man, more than 30 years old, wearing a straw hat, jumped into the truck as the 67-year-old was trying to park behind the store.

The assailant began beating and then choked the store owner, according to a police report. The victim said he was struck more than 20 times in the face.

When officers arrived, they observed the victim to be “bleeding from the head, eyes and throat,” wrote one officer in the incident report. The victim told police that at one point during the reported attack, the suspect tried to grab the keys to the truck and to put the vehicle in park.

Responding officers wrote that the victim was so shaken by the attack, he could only speak in his native Hebrew and had to communicate through an interpreter.

“We’re not going to comment beyond what’s in the report,” said Capt. Stan Gragg, police spokesman. “It’s just way too early in the investigation for that.”

Police are looking into the incident as an aggravated assault and attempted carjacking, but on Monday officers turned up no leads while canvasing the area around Waves.

Officers pulled several surveillance camera recordings from neighboring businesses, according to the report, but Gragg wouldn’t comment on whether the footage was helpful.

After the attack, the victim told police the suspect walked toward the Irongate Plaza, but no one at the nearby Comfort Inn reported seeing anyone fitting the suspect's description.

The victim resides in Myrtle Beach and is a partner in the local Waves location. Messages left for the victim and his business partner were not returned on Thursday.