Man charged with brutally attacking elderly couple over a parking spot

By Ari Hait

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    STUART, Florida (WPBF) — An elderly couple was brutally beaten in a Stuart parking lot.

The victims, a husband and wife in their 70s, said all they did was ask someone if they were pulling out of a parking spot.

Now, the suspect has been arrested.

The couple has asked to remain anonymous.

“I’m still in shock,” the wife said.

“You’re not prepared for it,” the husband said.

It happened on Jan. 31 in the parking lot in front of Stuart City Hall.

The couple was on their way to dinner.

“Driving around looking for a parking place on a Saturday night,” the wife said. “Nothing available.”

And then they saw a man get into his truck.

They thought they’d gotten lucky.

“So, we waited. And we waited. And it got to be what, five minutes or so?” the wife said. “So, I said I’ll just ask him if he’s leaving. If he’s not leaving, then we’ll just move on.”

The woman tapped on the man’s window and said that’s all it took for the man to explode.

“Told me to get away from his truck, don’t touch his truck,” she said. “I said, ‘I’m not touching your truck.’ And I was backing away with my hands up. And he opened the door, jumped out and came over and hit me in the face and knocked me to the ground and started kicking me in the rib area and the stomach area.”

“I jumped out and ran around the car,” the husband said. “I ran over to him and tackled him. And he was younger and stronger, a lot stronger than me and knocked me down.”

“Every time he got away from him, he would come back over and start kicking me again,” the wife said.

The man eventually drove away, leaving the couple on the ground, badly bruised.

“You wouldn’t recognize me a couple of weeks ago because my face was twice the size as it is now,” the husband said. “My eyes were completely shut.”

It took three weeks, but Stuart Police eventually identified Mark Swick as the attacker and arrested him.

Swick is charged with two felony counts of battery on a person over the age of 65.

It’s still not clear what set him off.

“I didn’t even get a chance to ask him about his parking spot,” the wife said. “He just immediately went off.”

“If I hadn’t been there, he could’ve killed her,” the husband said.

In addition to the bruises, the couple learned Wednesday the wife suffered three broken ribs in the attack.

They both said they hope Swick spends as much time as possible in prison, so he’s not able to do this to anyone else.

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