Oak Harbor man charged after brutal 7-Eleven assault leaves victim unconscious

The violence outside the south-end 7-Eleven in Oak Harbor turned a late-night fight into a serious felony case after a 46-year-old man was left unconscious on the ground, badly injured and bleeding from his face, mouth and left ear.

Police say Vernon L. Zeigler kept striking the man after he had already gone down on Friday, April 24. An officer who arrived at the scene saw agonal breathing, a sign the brain may be deprived of oxygen, and found severe swelling and bruising on one side of the victim’s face. The man was airlifted to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle and later released.

Zeigler was arrested at the scene. In an interview with police, he said the victim had called him the N-word and that he hit him four or five times with an open hand. Investigators and witnesses described something far more violent. One bystander told police he thought the victim was dead.

The assault drew immediate attention from people nearby. According to the police report summarized in court records, three people at 7-Eleven South called at about 10:30 p.m. to report two men fighting near the gas pumps. One caller said the victim had been knocked out and was still being hit while lying on the ground. Another witness, across the street at DK Market, said he saw Zeigler standing over the victim and hitting him with his hands. That witness yelled for Zeigler to stop, then shoved him away when the assault continued.

Zeigler appeared in Island County Superior Court on April 25, where Judge Christon Skinner found probable cause for first-degree assault and set bail at $100,000. Prosecutors later filed a second-degree assault charge on April 29, shifting the case toward reckless infliction of substantial bodily harm rather than the higher legal threshold for great bodily harm.

Washington law defines great bodily harm as an injury that creates a probability of death or causes significant permanent disfigurement or permanent loss or impairment of a bodily part or organ. First-degree assault is relatively unusual in Washington when no firearm, poison or HIV transmission is involved, which makes the Oak Harbor case stand out even more sharply.

The scene at a busy south-end corner, where multiple callers quickly reported the fight and a witness feared the victim was dead, left a question that now sits in the court record as well as in the community: whether this was a personal confrontation that exploded into brutality, or another reminder of how quickly a late-night stop can become a public-safety emergency.