Man badly injured in assault outside convenience store

Published 1:30 am Friday, May 1, 2026

A Whidbey resident is accused of severely beating a man outside the 7-Eleven Store on the south end of Oak Harbor on the night of Friday, April 24, according to court documents.

The victim, a 46-year-old man, was knocked unconscious, but the suspect, Vernon L. Zeigler, continued to beat him on the ground, according to a police report. Police found the victim with his face covered in blood, blood streaming out of his mouth and left ear and with the left side of his face severely swollen and purple. An officer noted agonal breathing, which occurred when the brain is deprived of oxygen.

The man was airlifted to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle for treatment. On Wednesday, a Harborview spokesperson said the man had been released from the hospital.

Police arrested 36-year-old Zeigler at the scene. He told police that he attacked the man, whom he didn’t know, because he kept calling him the N-word.

Zeigler appeared in Island County Superior Court on April 25. Judge Christon Skinner found probable cause to believe Zeigler may have committed the crime of assault in the first degree and ordered him held in lieu of a $100,000 bail bond.

On April 29, however, prosecutors charged Zeigler in Island County Superior Court with assault in the second degree.

A charge of assault in the first degree is relatively unusual since prosecutors have to prove the high bar of “great bodily harm” in an assault that doesn’t involve a firearm, poison or the transmission of HIV. Under state law, great bodily harm means “bodily injury which creates a probability of death, or which causes significant serious permanent disfigurement or which causes a significant permanent loss or impairment of the function of any bodily part or organ.”

Under the assault in the second degree charge, Zeigler is accused of recklessly inflicting “substantial bodily harm.”

According to a report by an officer with the Oak Harbor Police Department, three people at 7-Eleven South reported at about 10:30 p.m. that two people were fighting near the gas pumps. One of the callers reported that the victim was knocked out and lying on the ground while the other man, later identified as Zeigler, continued to hit him. A bystander thought that the victim was dead.

Medic units arrived and treated the victim, who was momentarily conscious. He was transported to WhidbeyHealth Medical Center and later flown to Harborview.

One of the witnesses said he was across the street at the DK Market when he saw Zeigler standing over the man and hitting him with his hands. The man ran over and yelled at Zeigler to stop; when Zeigler continued the assault, the man shoved him away, the report states.

In an interview with police, Zeigler said he hit the man four or five times “open handed,” which the officer wrote was not consistent with the injuries.

Zeigler said he was standing in front of the store and talking to some other guys when the man “came out of nowhaere” and started calling him the racial epithet. Zeigler said he ignored the comments at first but then “ended up on top of him,” the report states. Zeigler claimed he continued to assault the man because he felt he was being threatened.