Teen at Gasparilla defended girls facing sexual harassment. A man attacked him.

Ethan Shamblin, 18, had never been in a fight.

He didn’t expect to find himself in one after standing up for his friends, a group of teen girls who a man at Gasparilla was harassing.

When Shamblin told the man that the girls were minors, the man kept trying to talk to them. At one point he said that “if they’re 16 then I’m 16,” Shamblin said.

Shamblin called him a pervert. The man then jumped toward him, repeatedly hit him in the back of the head and tried slamming his head into the concrete. Shamblin said he kept his head from getting split open by putting his arm over his face.

“Honestly I do not really care that I got beat up,” Shamblin, a senior at Newsome High School, said. “But what’s gonna happen when he’s trying to do this with another underage girl and no one’s there to say anything?”

Shamblin had initially gone to Gasparilla with a group of his male friends. He left to meet up with his girlfriend and her friends, who were the ones being harassed. He said three of the girls are 16 and two are 17.

The next morning, Shamblin’s mom encouraged him to report the incident to the Tampa police. She has since made a Facebook post asking for help identifying the man, who introduced himself to the girls as Brent and as Kelly, Shamblin said.

In the post, she wrote that she was grateful the man didn’t have a knife or gun and that things didn’t take a turn for the worse.

“In my book he acted heroically," she wrote of her son, “but I do NOT recommend it in this dangerous world we live in.”

Police say the suspect is about 25 years old and was wearing a red and white striped shirt with black shorts. The attack happened around 4 or 4:30 p.m. near the intersection of Bayshore Boulevard and South Howard Avenue.

A stranger separated the man from Shamblin and told them to walk away from each other.

On Tuesday, Shamblin said his neck was still sore and he had a bump on his head.

“I’m just a high school kid, I don’t really get into much trouble,” Shamblin said. “I didn’t really know people like that existed. Now I know how people can actually be.”

After last year’s Gasparilla, police were asked to investigate a report from a woman who said a Ye Mystic Krewe pirate pulled down her top and stamped her breast without her permission. The case did not result in criminal charges.