(WESH/NBC) - ORMOND BEACH, Fla. - A Sunday bike ride through a Florida park was anything but pleasant for a woman and her boyfriend.
The man said he rode right into a fishing line that was tied off between a dock and a tree, which was at neck height.
The couple alerted police who took a report and suggested it might have been homeless in the woods using fishing line to dry clothes, but the couple feels certain this was no accident.
"I'm lucky to walk away. It's just scary to think that something like that is out here," said the injured man who did not want to be identified.
This man and his girlfriend did not want to show their faces since they ride bikes in Central Park almost daily and fear reprisal for sounding the alarm.
The incident left a visible red mark along his throat where the fishing line, which was tied across a path near the Joyce Ebbets Pier, caught him. The man said he fell off his bike to save himself.
"It was burning like somebody was like taking fishing wire, or something like that, trying to decapitate me the whole time," he said.
"All of a sudden he goes down to the ground, and I see the line come up out of his neck," said his girlfriend.
She shared a picture on social media with an arrow showing where the fishing line was located, which also had a hook still attached.
It had rained, so the pair said they were not riding too fast. Had they been or had the test line been a little thicker, she thinks the outcome could have been far more serious.
"He could have gone right through it, and it could have taken his head off in all reality," the man's girlfriend said.
The fishing line was hard to see from a distance. In fact, he thought it was a spider web. Both are sure it was placed along the path deliberately.
"It was intentional. There's no way that this could have been somebody's fishing line that got hung up on the dock, and they just walked with it because it would have been laying on the ground. It was strung up at neck height on purpose," said the man's girlfriend.
Police said they did a cursory search and didn't find any more possible booby traps. The couple just wants other folks in this area to be aware.
Courtesy WESH via NBC News Channel