A Florida man accused of slashing a 70-year-old Publix shopper walked free from mental health court months earlier, despite a prior victim’s mother warning he remained a volatile threat.
Ramsey Thomas Lyons, 47, faces a felony charge of aggravated battery on a person 65 years or older after police say he attacked a shopper with a box cutter inside a Publix Super Market on Tamiami Trail in Punta Gorda shortly before 4 p.m. on Oct. 10, 2026.
The alleged attack came just over three months after a Charlotte County court terminated his probation from a prior assault case, with no objection from the State Attorney’s Office and a handwritten note in the minutes reading “Graduation! Congratulations!” beside a smiley face. That earlier case involved a 16-year-old punched at a Port Charlotte Wawa. The teen’s mother says she warned officials Lyons was still dangerous and that the diversion track left him on outpatient probation in the same neighborhood.
Fox News reported the new case through police accounts and a sworn probable cause affidavit, along with the prior victim family’s account of how the system handled Lyons after the 2025 arrest.
Punta Gorda police say Lyons approached 70-year-old David Terry from behind while Terry shopped. Terry felt a violent strike, turned, and saw Lyons holding a box cutter blade and staring at him.
Terry touched his head, found his hands bloody, and ran to the front of the store. Officers apprehended Lyons there with his hands on his head. The box cutter was recovered from an aisle.
Terry was taken to Fawcett Memorial Hospital with a severe cut measuring four to six inches from his left cheek down to his neck, plus a minor laceration to his upper chest.
According to the affidavit account, Lyons waived his Miranda rights and described the attack in blunt terms.
"I just pulled it out of my pocket and stuck it in his neck,"
he told police, per the affidavit language reported in the coverage. He also said he held a deep “dislike for the 1960s era,” admitted he planned to kill someone in the store that day, and targeted Terry because the shopper “looked like he was from the 1960s” and he felt like “acing him out.” He said he spent two days planning and purposely dropped the weapon so officers would not use a Taser or shoot him.
Lyons is held without bond at the Charlotte County Jail. His arraignment is set for Nov. 16 at the Charlotte County Justice Center. He declined a public defender; it is unclear whether he hired private counsel. The State Attorney’s Office for the 20th Judicial Circuit did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.
On March 13, 2025, Lyons assaulted a 16-year-old at a Wawa gas station in Port Charlotte. Court and family accounts describe a sucker punch to the side of the face as the teen held a door open. Lyons was arrested and placed into a specialized Mental Health Court diversion program in the 20th Judicial Circuit.
On July 6, the court terminated his probation. The State Attorney’s Office lodged no objection. Court minutes carried the handwritten line “Graduation! Congratulations!” with a hand-drawn smiley face.
Shawna Gentry, mother of the teenager, told reporters she fought the diversion track. She asked the prosecutor to seek jail time, alcohol classes, and probation. She warned that Lyons was an active, volatile threat and challenged the idea that the episode was simply a psychiatric break. She said Lyons appeared visibly intoxicated during the 2025 assault and that prior victims received no tracking updates or safety alerts.
Gentry described the process as shutting her family out.
"The way the court handled it, the way the state attorney handled it was very odd to me,"
she said. She added:
"They told us they were sending him to a mental health facility, but he never went to a secured place. From what we saw, they just put him right back onto outpatient probation in our neighborhood and cut us completely out of the process."
She also recalled Lyons’s quick pivot when law enforcement arrived in 2025.
"When the sheriff came, it was almost like he knew exactly what to say,"
Gentry said. “He immediately said, ‘Well, I've got mental health issues.’ He was so quick to use that word.”
After the Publix incident, Gentry’s son saw coverage on TikTok and ran to her. She described the moment in plain terms.
"My son saw it on TikTok, came running to me, and I could see the emotion in his face,"
she said. “Big old tears welled up in his eyes and he said, ‘Mom, the guy that hit me just stabbed an old man at Publix. You were right.’”
She tied the two cases together through her son’s earlier warning to deputies.
"The first thing out of my son's mouth to the sheriff back in 2025 was that if that man had a gun or a knife, he wouldn't be here today. Now an innocent senior citizen is in the hospital because the system refused to hold him accountable."
Mental health courts have grown into a large national network. The National Treatment Court Resource Center counted 679 adult mental health courts nationwide at the end of 2024. A 2021 analysis of 30 evaluations linked participation to 74% lower odds of repeat offending. A 2005 study in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence found that among offenders with mental disorders, the number of previous offenses was the strongest predictor of reoffending.
Those numbers sit beside the concrete sequence in Charlotte County: a 2025 assault on a teen, diversion and early probation termination with celebratory court minutes, then an alleged planned box-cutter attack on a 70-year-old shopper inside a busy supermarket just over three months later. Gentry’s account is that officials promised a secured mental health placement and instead returned Lyons to outpatient supervision near the same community, while cutting the prior victim’s family out of updates.
Publix, the employee-owned supermarket chain based in Lakeland with more than 1,400 locations, became the scene of the new alleged attack. Punta Gorda police recovered the weapon, documented the injuries, and booked Lyons on the enhanced aggravated battery charge tied to the victim’s age. He remains locked up without bond as the November arraignment approaches.
The affidavit language attributes to Lyons a two-day plan, a stated dislike of the “1960s era,” and a decision to drop the blade so police would not tase or shoot him. The prior victim’s mother says she told the system he was a threat and that her son had already flagged the risk of a weapon. The court minutes marked the end of probation like a graduation. A senior citizen then left a grocery store for the hospital with a long cut from cheek to neck.
When courts treat accountability like a ceremony and freeze out the people who already got hurt, ordinary shoppers pay the price.
