Pumped Up

A man who had never been in a fight in his life finds himself in a fight for his life

- BY Derek Burnett

AT A LITTLE AFTER 11 a.m. on New Year's Day of 2024, Lynn William Segebart stopped by a gas station in Palm Springs, Florida, near his home in Lantana.

Tomorrow would be the start of a new workweek at his job managing inventory for a beverage distributor, and he stopped to buy bottled water to get him through the next couple of days. As he stood in the checkout line behind a few other customers, he heard screaming coming from outside. The others in the store either didn’t hear or chose to ignore the commotion. Segebart, 61, put down the water and rushed out the door. What he saw shocked him: Over by the gas pumps, a man was being stabbed.

Moments before, 21-year-old Enrique Velasquez had been pumping gas into his blue Chevy Camaro when a man he'd never seen before stepped from the other side of the pumps and said, “I’m going to kill you today.”