Deputies said a brutal attack that played out in a Volusia County woods left an autistic high school student begging for mercy.

Two men are behind bars, accused of beating him up because he was a witness in a case against one of them.

According to investigators, the attack happened two weeks ago but it was only reported to deputies yesterday, when a video of the beating was posted online.

Investigators said two men took Timothy Dakel into some woods across from a Walmart on Howland Boulevard in Deltona, and punched and kicked him repeatedly. And, investigators said, the men recorded the entire attack.

Dakel, 20, told WFTV's Kenneth Craig that the men confronted him at the doors to the Walmart. He said he was so scared that he walked with them through the parking lot to the wooded area where, he said, they attacked him.

"I was just scared for my life, trying to beg him to stop," said Dakel.

Deputies say that beating came at the hands of Scott Lakhan. They said Dakel made a witness statement to deputies last month about Lakhan using a stolen credit card.

According to deputies, Lakhan learned of Dakel's witness statement and when he and another man, Casey Shoemaker, randomly ran into Dakel at the Walmart, the trouble began.

"He said if I didn't fight him that day, he would bring five people to my house," said Dakel.

Deputies say Lakhan beat Dakel while Shoemaker recorded the entire four-minute ordeal.

Dakel didn't tell anyone. He said he knew the beating was being recorded on a cellphone. He said he thought no one except Lakhan and Shoemaker would see it.

But the video was posted on Facebook.

When officials at Pine Ridge High School saw the video on Thursday, they immediately called deputies and Dakel's father.

"My son has Asperger's Syndrome, a form of autism. It makes it all the more difficult for me to understand why he was brutalized this way," said Mark Dakel.

Lakhan and Shoemaker are being held at the Volusia County Jail on $17,000 bonds.