Did ‘bath salts’ cause growling man to chew off 70 percent of a homeless man’s face?
Here are more details related to the gruesome cannibalistic attack in Miami last month during which the cops shot and killed the naked perpetrator.
‘HE’S GOING TO KILL THAT MAN, I PROMISE YOU’: MIAMI CANNIBAL ATTACK 911 CALLS REVEAL GRUESOME DETAILS AS PASSERS-BY WATCHED IN HORROR
Cannibal tore into victim’s face with his teeth and growled; police believe he may have taken ‘bath salts’, the new LSD
By Associated Press and Helen Collis
Mail Online
June 2, 2012
Passers by who witnessed the horrific attack by the 'Miami cannibal' who ripped off the face of a homeless man with his teeth feared he was going to kill his victim.
Police have revealed the calls from terrified members of the public who saw the violence attack against 65-year-old Ronald Poppo on a Miami highway.
But none of them mentioned the extent of the injuries from the vicious assault, or the means by which the 'Miami cannibal' was attacking his victim - with his teeth.
Callers only reported seeing two men fighting in the shadow of The Miami Herald headquarters but did not mention seeing Poppo's face being torn off and eaten.
'He's going to kill that man, I promise you,' a female bus driver said, urging a 911 operator to send help. Poppo remains hospitalised.
The driver, who wasn't named by authorities, described the scene as she drove by.
'Listen, there is a naked man on the MacArthur Causeway,' she said. 'He is beating another man to a pulp - like on top of the man, beating him, the man is bleeding.'
Another caller said the two men were fighting, saying they nearly knocked over an elderly bicyclist.
'These two bums were going at it with each other, taking up the whole lane,' the caller said. 'I think they were fighting or something.'
The unidentified man gave his phone number to the 911 operator. He declined to comment when contacted Friday evening by The Associated Press.
A second male caller didn't mention the fight, instead reporting that he saw a man taking off his clothes and throwing them into traffic.
'You can't miss him. He's naked,' the man said.
Surveillance video shows Rudy Eugene, 31, attacking Poppo alongside the highway last Saturday afternoon. A police officer fatally shot Eugene during the attack. Police have not released a motive for the attack.
Friends and relatives of Eugene have spoken of their complete shock at the news, claiming he must have been drugged.
Eugene's girlfriend, who did not wish to be named, recently spoke out about her shock and disbelief about her boyfriend's attack.
The Christian man never left the house without his Bible and she described him as sweet and well-mannered.
'That wasn’t him, that was his body but it wasn’t his spirit. Somebody did this to him,' she said. 'He loved God he always read the Bible he would give you knowledge on the Bible. Everywhere he went his Bible went. When he left he had his Bible in his hand.'
Ruth Charles does not believe police accounts that her son Rudy Eugene assaulted Ronald Poppo and tore 70 percent of his face off with his teeth -- despite watching the horrifying surveillance video of the attack.
'I knew my son. Rudy will never, never do something like that,' Ms Charles told WPLG.
'He was a good kid. He gave me a nice card on Mother’s Day. Everyone says he was a zombie. He was no zombie. That was my son,' she told WFOR.
She, along with Eugene's girlfriend and his brother have painted a radically different picture of the 31-year-old than the naked man seen using his teeth to tear flesh from another man's face for 18 minutes.
Poppo had been homeless for 30 years and his estranged family thought he was dead. His sister, Antoinette Poppo, thought he had killed himself years ago and was distraught by the news of his injuries.
'I really don’t understand what happened,' Ms Poppo said. 'We really thought he was no longer on this earth.'
Mr Poppo had been living all this time on the streets of Florida and his family thought he had committed suicide years before.
The Miami Herald reported that Mr Poppo would stay just outside a public restroom on the north side of Jungle Island in Miami.
Ms Poppo only just learned that her brother was still alive this week, hanging on for dear life.
'I remember a very intelligent boy,' Ms Poppo told CBS, beginning to cry. 'I’m very upset. I’m just glad my mother isn’t here to see this.'
The victim's daughter, Janice Poppo DiBello, 44, from New Jersey, was stunned this week when the New York Daily News told her that the victim of the gruesome attack which shocked America was in fact her absentee father.
She told the paper: 'I’m really upset because I haven’t met my father. Since I was two-years-old, him and my mom got divorced and there was no — like how normal divorces are, where you see your father.
'Nobody ever heard anything from him, so I’ve never met him. I didn’t know if he was alive or dead.'
Mr Poppo was once a student at a prestigious New York school before he became a down-and-out.
A yearbook picture of Ronald Poppo was obtained by the New York Daily News, who reported the victim was in the Latin Club and worked in the guidance office at Stuyvesant High School before he became homeless.
Recently released footage of the 65-year-old's dramatic rescue shows he was still conscious and moving his arms after the attack, while Rudy Eugene's body lay next to him.
After paramedics tend to the victim's facial injuries, they carefully place him on a stretcher.
As they carry him from the walkway where the attack took place to the ambulance, he starts to wave his arms around and has to be strapped down.
As police piece together the last hours of Eugene's life, they believe he attended a Memorial Day weekend beach party before making the three-mile journey home on foot in more than 90F.
He took off and scattered his clothes as he walked across the causeway - police later found his drivers license and clothes strewn from the beach to the mainland - before pouncing on the homeless man he found sleeping on the elevated train tracks, according to the Miami Herald.
After he strips and punches his victim, he straddles him before starting to eat his face off. Cars and a number of cyclists passed the two men while the attack took place.
It was almost 20 minutes until officer Jose Rivera shot Eugene shortly after he arrived. He shouted at the 31-year-old to stop but he simply got up and growled and continued eating at the man's face.
A former classmate of Eugene Victoria Forte, who attended North Miami Beach High School, told the Sun Sentinel: 'Drugs did this to him. Drugs took over a person we knew as a beautiful person.'
According to Miami police, the first call of a disturbance came from a passing motorist who reported seeing Eugene stripping off his clothes and acting erratically.
A Road Ranger called to the scene also called 911 and used a loudspeaker to call for the naked attacker to cease.
As the attack dragged on, two other motorists called police, as did another cyclist, Larry Vega, who later told reporters that Eugene 'just stood, his head up like that, with pieces of flesh in his mouth. And he growled'. He also said it was the most gruesome and traumatic thing he had ever seen'.
According to the Herald, Eugene had been in Miami Beach for the Memorial Day Weekend shortly before the attack.
His car, a purple 1995 Chevrolet Caprice, was towed for being parked illegally at 1100 10th Street, according to police.
It is believed Eugene was under the influence of a potent form of drug called 'bath salts' at the time but toxicology results will take several weeks.
Emergency room doctors at Jackson Memorial Hospital said they have seen an increase in incidents related to the drug, which is referred to on the street as 'the new LSD'.
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