MARATHON, Fla. – A convicted felon admitted to detectives that he “may have gone ‘overboard’” in repeatedly punching a man at a Marathon park over the weekend, leading to his death, according to an arrest report obtained by Local 10 News on Tuesday.
According to that report, a witness told Monroe County deputies that suspect Lee Charles Quinn, 37, and victim William Claude Pritchett, 54, had been arguing over allegations of stolen valor.
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Quinn is now facing a second-degree murder charge in Pritchett’s death. Deputies described both men as homeless, though a man who said he was a neighbor of Pritchett’s contacted Local 10 News to state that Pritchett, known as Billy, lived aboard a boat docked at a Marathon marina.
Deputies said the incident happened just before 4 p.m. Saturday at Marathon Community Park, located at 200 36th St.
The report states that a Marathon parks and recreation employee had called police to report the fight. Deputies arrived to find Pritchett unconscious and unresponsive with his eyes open and breathing “distressed.”
Pritchett had been in that state for 20 minutes, witnesses at the scene said, and would be taken to Baptist Health Fishermen’s Community Hospital, where doctors pronounced him dead just before 5 p.m.
A witness, who also ended up being punched while attempting in vain to break up the altercation, told deputies that Pritchett and Quinn had been arguing “about Quinn falsely stating that he had been a military veteran,” saying that Pritchett “had confronted Quinn about that being a lie,” the report states.
Another witness said he went into a park bathroom to avoid the fight, but, when he came back out and walked towards a park pavilion, Quinn approached him, asking, “Do you want to be next?”
The report states Quinn threw two unopened pocket knives at the man and left.
Deputies said they found Quinn riding his bicycle. Quinn first claimed that the first witness, known as “Sloth,” punched Pritchett “because he took beer.”
“I didn’t hit nobody, Sloth did,” the report states that Quinn told a deputy.
But deputies said Quinn changed his story a few minutes later and claimed that he had been attacked by Pritchett first and punched him in retaliation.
“(He) grabbed me by the hair and he pulled me into the bushes and then I hit him,” Quinn allegedly told deputies.
The report states that Quinn would tell an investigator that it was “possible” that Pritchett had been knocked unconscious after the first punch, later admitting that he “may have gone ‘overboard’” in punching Pritchett repeatedly and acknowledging that Pritchett was a “frail” man who would “pose no threat to him.”
Quinn, who claimed to be a “professional fighter,” was subsequently arrested.
He’s being held in the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office Key West Jail facility on a $750,000 bond as of Tuesday afternoon, jail records show.