Ramsey Thomas Lyons, 47, was taken into custody at the Publix at 2310 Tamiami Trail in Punta Gorda after a 70-year-old shopper was cut with a box cutter on Oct. 10, according to Gulf Coast News Now. Lyons faces a charge of aggravated battery on a person 65 or older. WINK News reported that the shopper told officers he saw Lyons looking at him with a box cutter blade before the attack.
The victim had a cut about four to six inches long extending from his cheek across his jaw and onto his neck, along with a smaller wound on his upper chest. He was treated at Fawcett Hospital in Port Charlotte and received stitches, and told investigators he wanted to pursue charges, according to WENG Radio.
What WENG reported about the police account
WENG Radio, reporting on Lyons’s statements to police, said he told investigators he entered the store intending to kill someone and had considered an attack for two days. WENG also reported that Lyons mentioned an undiagnosed mental illness. In a separate account, the station reported that Lyons said he selected the shopper because the man looked to him as if he were from the 1960s, and that the two did not know each other.
WENG reported that Lyons said he discarded the box cutter in an aisle after the attack so officers would not be alarmed. The article also reported that officers recovered the cutter there, and that Lyons was taken to Charlotte County Jail and turned over to jail staff without incident. Those details, like the account of Lyons’s statements, have not been independently confirmed here.
Records for the current case were not independently available at publication. A March 2025 police-beat listing from Your Sun lists a Ramsey Thomas Lyons, then 45, from the 200 block of West End Drive in Punta Gorda, arrested on a battery charge and released on a $500 bond.
