Daytona Truck Meet greeted with 190 citations; naked man gets arrested
Daytona FL June 8 2019
Police have been on high alert for raucous activity during the three-day Truck Meet, but they already were consumed with work 24 hours before the event kicked off.
Authorities said they arrested an unidentified man accused of running around naked Thursday night outside a Main Street gas station and urinating on a police car.
Additionally, a total of 190 citations were issued Thursday, one day before the official start of the third-annual Daytona Truck Meet, according to the Daytona Beach Police Department.
Organizers have estimated that the three-day event — held at Daytona International Speedway, 1801 W. International Speedway Blvd. — will bring more than 25,000 monster-style truck enthusiasts to the Daytona area. During the last two Truck Meets, some of the attendees caused too much mayhem, according to local police and business leaders.
The mayhem this year started as the visitors were rolling into town.
Shortly after 10:15 p.m. Thursday, police booked a nude “John Doe” at the Volusia County Branch Jail after he had run up to an officer’s vehicle parked at the Circle K station at 201 Main St. and urinated on it, according to an arrest report.
Police said the man started banging the glass doors of the store with his hands and began urinating on the building. The clerk inside the building locked the doors because she was scared of the man, the report stated.
The naked man tried to urinate on one of the arresting officers and resisted arrest, police said. He was charged with resisting arrest without violence, indecent exposure, disorderly conduct and assault. He is being held without bail.
As for the activities on the beach, high tide conditions kept a lot of motorists off the sand Friday morning, but trucks lined the beach by early afternoon, said Capt. Andrew Ethridge, a spokesman with Volusia County Beach Safety Ocean Rescue.
“It’s like dead-stop traffic out here,” Ethridge said, describing the southbound lane of traffic near the Silver Beach approach.
The trucks made up most of the beach traffic Friday and the sand is “pretty chewed up” as a result, Ethridge said.
In 2017, beachside hoteliers and visitors complained about the antics from Truck Meet attendees. That led to police ratcheting up efforts last year to quell the rowdiness. As a result, thousands of traffic citations were issued by law enforcement during the 2018 Truck Meet.
Beach Safety officers have been out in force this weekend, which has likely caused people to think twice before causing trouble, Ethridge said.
“We’ve got a good presence out here,” he said. “We’re making sure they see us.”
For this year’s event, organizers added a series of late-night activities at One Daytona, a retail complex located across from the Speedway. Doing so, organizers said, is likely to lessen the event’s impact on beachside and improve nighttime traffic.
Daytona Beach News-Journal
