Just a few inches down and he could have died.
A Largo teen is recovering from a deep slash wound to his face. It happened on Clearwater Beach right next to Pier 60.
The victim, Auztin Blount, and his wife sat on the sea wall, enjoying Sunday night.
That’s when a woman selling flowers tried to make a sale.
“She asked me, ‘do you want to buy some flowers for your girlfriend? I have white, red roses 5 dollars a piece.’ So, I told her very politely, I was like, ‘no thank you,’” said Blount.
He is now sporting a 6-inch scar with 17 stitches on one side of his face.
How he got it is down right frightening.
He said the woman offering to sell flowers asked if he had any drugs to sell.
He said, no.
“And then she offered to sell drugs to me. She offered to sell me some marijuana. I told her, ‘no, I’m straight.’ She said, ‘well you don’t even know what I have, let me show you what I got, it’s that good stuff,’” said Blount.
With people around, strolling along the beach pathway, Auztin told her to leave.
The woman started cussing at him and his wife.
“I turn around, next thing you know, the girl hits me in the face with a box cutter or some type of knife and just drags it down my face,” he said.
He thought he’d only been punched.
“I felt a bunch of blood just go running down my face. And I felt it and I was like, ‘oh man, sliced me open,’” said Blount.
The woman, identified as 36-year-old Kristi Kaufman, took off running toward the pier and playground.
Wounded and bleeding, Auztin followed. At the pier, he spotted an officer.
“He asked me what was going on. I looked at him. I said, ‘she just cut my face open,’” said Auztin.
Police reports say the officer struggled to arrest Kaufman, as she tried to fight him off.
“And it’s scary man, because of she would have just cut me down here a little bit farther, I could have got killed, man,” said Auztin.
Prison records show Kristi Kaufman served time for aggravated battery with a deadly weapon.
Auztin now faces plastic surgery to fix his face.
