In June of 2008, Anthony Blakely was at the Starlite Cafe in Jacksonville, where he worked as a DJ. Unfortunately, the girlfriend of Foster Rayfield Leon was also there that night with a male friend. At some point in the evening, the male friend hit on Blakely...
But Blakely told the man he was more interested in the woman he was accompanying. The man said the woman was in a relationship with someone else, so Blakely let it be.
He stayed away from the woman after that. But that didn't matter to Leon, the woman's boyfriend, who's apparently the violent, jealous type.
On July 4, 2008, Leon arrived at the Starlite with the same woman. Blakely was DJing that night.
The woman asked him to play a song, but he didn't have it. Blakely thought nothing of the matter, and would later spend at least part of the night drinking with Leon. But she'd apparently told Leon that Blakely hit on her a month earlier.
Blakely was drunk that night and still doesn't remember much of what happened next. But in the early morning hours, Leon beat him into unconsciousness outside the bar. Then he dragged Blakely a few blocks from the bar, where he cut his eyes from their sockets and left him to bleed to death.
All Blakely remembers is waking up to find his eyeballs resting on his cheeks. Half an ear had also been cut off.
Blakely was blinded by the incident. He fled Florida to stay with relatives, worried that Leon would return to finish him off.
But Leon fled with the woman a day after the attack, hiding in New Orleans. He wasn't caught until his girlfriend signed up for electricity in her name.
It took a jury less than two hours yesterday to convict Leon of kidnapping and attempted murder. He's now facing up to life in prison when he's sentenced in May.
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