PANAMA CITY BEACH — Three women told deputies they were raped within a few hours of one another late Thursday and early Friday.
The allegations were made between 11:30 p.m. Thursday and 4 a.m. Friday, though investigators are beginning to doubt the validity of the last report, officials said Friday.
“I don’t have a lot of confidence in that one,” said Bay County Sheriff’s Office Maj. Tommy Ford.
Deputies had not completed an incident report on that case as of Friday afternoon.
In the first incident, deputies were called to Hammerhead Fred’s on Thomas Drive around 11:30 p.m. The victim told deputies a black man taller than 6 feet with short hair raped her in a portable toilet and they would find a large amount of blood inside.
Police and club security searched the club but didn’t find the suspect. The crime scene was processed and the victim hospitalized. The relationship between the suspect and the victim, if any, is not clear.
Just before 1 a.m., deputies found a woman wearing only a long shirt standing on the corner outside of Zoo World on Front Beach Road. She said she’d begun walking home after a fight with her boyfriend when she was approached by three black men in an orange car who offered her a ride.
She said they drove to a parking lot where two men took turns raping her before she got out of the car. She had a cell phone she said she took from one of her attackers.
Deputies detained suspects in a vehicle matching the description the victim had given. They were later released without charges, but deputies seized the vehicle and are processing it for potential evidence, Ford said.
The third report came in around 4 a.m. from the Coconut Grove Motor Inn on Front Beach Road. Few details about this case were available Friday, but Ford said witnesses were disputing the victim’s story.
No arrests in the three cases have been made, and each incident is under investigation.
Ford said rape investigations are especially challenging during Spring Break. Victims often are intoxicated, and in many cases they barely know their attackers. Because victim and suspects often are visitors they can be difficult to locate if they leave the area. Sometimes the allegations are just that, Ford added.
“Some of them turn out to be unfounded,” he said.