Miami 'Zombie' Eats Homeless Man's Face Suspectedly High on Bath Salts

Huffington Post- A newly released surveillance video from atop a Miami Herald parking garage shows the entire violent attack Saturday during which a naked man chewed off most of a homeless victim's face.




The video, uncensored though partially obscured and from a distance, shows 31-year-old Rudy Eugene in the last moments of his life: striking Ronald Poppo, 65, removing Poppo's pants, and brutalizing his face in broad daylight for nearly 18 minutes as traffic rolled past on the busy MacArthur Causeway.



Eugene was shot and killed by Miami Police officer Jose Rivera as he loomed over Poppo's bleeding body, but the video helps piece together the moments leading up to the gruesome attack and suggests the two men met by chance on the MacArthur's Biscayne Boulevard off-ramp, in the shadow of the Miami Metromover.



CBS Miami reports in a timeline of his last hours that Eugene, who spent Friday night with a girlfriend in Miami Gardens, drove to South Beach Saturday morning to check out Memorial Day weekend festivities and was unable to start his car to make a return trip. Abandoning his purple sedan, which was later towed, police say he at some point set off on foot across the causeway:

"It was a hot day, with temperatures in the 90's, and a long walk. Either late that morning, or early that afternoon, police sources said, Eugene began his trek back to Miami. As he walked across the causeway, they said he started stripping, leaving his clothes on the walkway and in the road.



Cops found his drivers license and clothes strewn from the beach to the mainland."

Footage released by the Herald picks up a fully naked Eugene just before 2 p.m. as he walked down the exit ramp on the other side of the bridge. Pausing in a shady spot, he reels or spins slightly as a bicyclist whizzes by, then is mostly lost to sight as he bends over the homeless Poppo where he sat or lay on the ground.


About two minutes, later, however, Eugene rolls Poppo into the middle of the sidewalk. He appears to strip away some of the older man's clothing and then savage his face as Poppo futilely resists. Several minutes later, Eugene again drags Poppo farther down the sidewalk and continues to attack him before another cyclist rolls slowly by and a white car pauses on the off-ramp, just on the other side of a short wall separating the roadway from the bike path.


Gruesome photos circulating the web would later confirm most of Poppo's face, including his nose, eyes, and mouth, was ripped away, in what Miami's Fraternal Order of Police vice president Sgt. Javier Ortiz told the Associated Press was of the "goriest scenes I've ever been to." Poppo remains in critical condition.




"He had his face eaten down to his goatee. The forehead was just bone. No nose, no mouth," said Sgt. Armando Aguilar, Miami FOP president. "In my opinion, he just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time."



The Herald reports at least five passersby called police:

"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. That call was routed to the Florida Highway Patrol — it’s unclear why — and then transferred to the Miami police. Police have not disclosed the time of the first call.



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.” '

The surveillance video shows at least two more cyclists pass before Officer Rivera drives up the off-ramp, about 18 minutes into the attack. Rivera can be seen approaching the scene at a normal pace before pulling his gun and quickly stepping into a shooting stance. Vega later told news outlets that when Rivera yelled at Eugene to back away, the naked man merely raised his head "with pieces of flesh in his mouth," growled, and began chewing again.




Rivera reportedly then shot Eugene once, but Eugene still continued to attack Poppo's face, prompting the officer to shoot multiple times until he was dead.



"The guy, he was like a zombie, blood dripping, it was intense," the New York Daily News quotes Vega as saying. "The closest thing I've seen to it? 'The Walking Dead'."



Though police theorize Eugene was prompted to attack Poppo by drug-induced psychosis -- possibly caused by a new drug called "bath salts" -- the Herald reports no drugs or paraphernalia were found at the scene. Toxicology reports are expected to take several weeks.

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How could ANY drug drive a person to do that to another person's face?  Then again, I don't believe Dr. Lector was on anything. ;)  But seriously, I now want to throw up. Holy shit. 

(Click HERE for graphic picture)

(Video of assault here!)

San Mateo Student Who Fell in Vancouver on LSD

Mercury News- A 17-year-old San Mateo high school student was under the influence of LSD when he plunged to his death during a trip to Canada in June with teachers and fellow classmates, a British Columbia coroner's report said Friday.

Unbeknownst to adult chaperones, Daniel Cho and two friends took the drug while they were on a bus from Seattle, Wash., to Vancouver, British Columbia, the coroner said. The boys were with more than 100 other Aragon High School students headed to Canada as part of a musical exchange program.

When the group made a stop at the Capilano Suspension Bridge, a popular tourist spot in North Vancouver on the evening of June 6, Cho climbed over a 4-foot-high fence and fell 100 feet into a ravine below.

The coroner has ruled his death an accident, and Canadian police won't file any criminal charges in connection with the case.

"Our thoughts and prayers go out to the family," said Scott Laurence, superintendent of the San Mateo Union High School District. "It was a very sad, tragic event."

Dad who ate eyes found mentally incompetent

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. -- The man accused of biting out his 4-year-old son's eyes will not stand trial.

A Kern County Superior Court judge ruled Tuesday that Angelo Mendoza is not mentally competent for trial. County mental health officials will recommend whether Mendoza should go to a county or state mental health facility.

The 34-year-old man is accused of attacking his son, Angelo Mendoza Jr., in late April. The child, who was discovered by a neighbor lying naked in a bloody heap on the floor of an Ohio Drive apartment, told officers, "My daddy ate my eyes," and, "Daddy bit my eyes and hands," according to Bakersfield police reports.

Mendoza is in a wheelchair with a spinal cord injury, and police said he rolled away from his apartment after the alleged attack and started hacking away at his leg with an ax. Police reported that Mendoza was showing signs of being under the influence of the psychedelic drug best known as PCP or angel dust during the alleged abuse.

Criminal proceedings have been delayed multiple times because Mendoza was reportedly in poor medical condition and uncommunicative.

The first doctor to examine Mendoza for mental competency determined last month that he would be mentally competent to stand trial if he was on proper medication. Another psychiatrist was appointed after the July 23 hearing, leading to Tuesday's ruling.

Charges of mayhem, torture, child cruelty and inflicting injury upon a child have been put on hold. A person in Mendoza's situation would typically be re-evaluated on a regular basis to determine if they're mentally sound enough to face charges, according to the public defender's office.

Mendoza is scheduled to return to court Sept. 22.

A CNN Psychological Piece

Teen tries to quiet the voices caused by schizophrenia

(CNN) -- The intrusive voices popped into William "Bill" Garrett's head. "They're coming for you," the voices told the 18-year-old. "Find somewhere to hide; they're going to get you."

They told the Johns Hopkins University freshman that his father had poisoned the family dog, his sister had injected crystal methamphetamine into his pet lizard and his grandmother had put human body parts into his food.

As schizophrenia took hold, the Maryland teenager became lost within his own mind and had to leave college after winning a full, four-year scholarship.

Garrett's experience echoes the teenage years of Nathaniel Ayers, a promising string bass player whose musical training at the Juilliard School was cut short by schizophrenia, a brain disorder that blurs a person's ability to distinguish between reality and delusions.

Ayers became homeless and played Beethoven pieces on a broken violin in the streets of Los Angeles, California. His struggles with schizophrenia and his friendship with a Los Angeles Times columnist inspired the movie "The Soloist," which releases Friday.

His sister, Jennifer Ayers-Moore, hopes the movie will raise awareness about schizophrenia and has established the Nathaniel Anthony Ayers Foundation for the artistically gifted mentally ill.

"I know there are thousands of Nathaniels, and they deserve a chance, too," said Ayers-Moore, an Atlanta-based social worker.

Teen interrupted
Schizophrenia is the result of disrupted brain development. Males typically get symptoms during their teens or early 20s, as Ayers and Garrett did.

"It's a critical time for the brain," said Dr. Jon McClellan, the medical director of the Child Study and Treatment Center at Seattle Children's Hospital. "It's the CEO part of the brain that pays attention, makes decisions and filters. The prefrontal cortex, that's the last area of the brain to develop. As that area comes online, that's when the illness presents."

In high school, Garrett won elected offices in student government and headed the lacrosse and cross country teams. A gifted student, he wanted to study political science and biology at Hopkins.

At home, he cooked family dinners, helped his little sister with homework, and surprised his mother with pancakes on her birthday.

"People likened him to the perfect child before he got sick," said his mother, Kristan Kanyuch.

In 2007, the unusual behaviors started. He slept a lot. He emptied an entire can of bug spray in his bedroom. When he came home for a weekend from college, he pointed to a blister on his hand that had formed from playing lacrosse.

"Look, I have gangrene," he said. "My hand is going to rot." Then he tried to cut off his hand with a paring knife.

His family stopped him and took him to an emergency room for a psych evaluation, but Garrett refused to wait and left.

A week later, Kanyuch got a call from the university. Her son was failing every class. When confronted, Garrett looked at the F's and calmly replied, "I'm not failing anything."

In the 1970s, Ayers-Moore saw the symptoms when her family picked her brother up from Juilliard to head home to Cleveland, Ohio, for summer.

"The look in his eye was so different," she said. "It was like you could see into his soul, he could look into yours. It sort of startled me a little bit. I didn't know what to say to him. On the way from New York, I pretended I was asleep. I didn't know what to say."

Paranoid schizophrenia
About three decades later, Nickole Kanyuch, 15, watched a similar scenario unfold as her brother, Garrett, struggled with paranoid schizophrenia and obsessive compulsive disorder.

"I watched the big brother who I had looked up to all my life fall apart and become someone entirely new," she said. "The boy who was destined for greatness, who worked long and hard for 12 years to lead a successful life, was destroyed in a mere six months."

Garrett, who had once organized his 600 books by the Dewey Decimal system, could hardly read two sentences. The voices in his head drowned out the words on the page, he told his mother.

Garrett, who color coordinated the clothes inside his closet, could no longer groom himself or shower. The voices told him the shampoo and soap were poisoned.

Kristan Kanyuch quit her financial planning job to take care of him. Despite taking medicine, Garrett's health fluctuated. One day he was fine; the next, he threatened to kill the neighbors. Frustrated and facing mounting debt, Kanyuch sought help.

She joined a mental health support group. At one session, she was told to follow simple instructions from a counselor. Meanwhile, 10 people who stood around her talked at once. While the chorus of voices drowned out the instructions, she realized this was how her son lived every day.

That night, Kanyuch hugged her son. "You have to be the most courageous person. You wake up every day," she told him.

"That's when he explained to me the reason he sleeps," Kanyuch said. "He doesn't hear the voices. He doesn't hear them telling him he's fat, stupid, there's a conspiracy. It's a break for him to sleep."

Although no one knows where these voices originated, they could be triggered by wiring problems in the brain, said McClellan, who researches adolescent psychiatry. One theory is schizophrenia causes difficulty distinguishing thoughts from their outside experiences, "so they experience internal thoughts and perceptions as voices," he said.

Recovery
Garrett has been a subject in two research programs searching for better schizophrenia treatments. His condition fluctuated and for months, he was on suicide watch.

Schizophrenia is a difficult disorder to treat, because one medication that soothes one patient can make another psychotic.

"Medication or dosages can't be matched absolutely with the individual, so there is some of that trial and error," said Dr. Thomas Bornemann, director of the Carter Center's Mental Health Program.

Garrett tried many drugs. Some made him drowsy, others volatile and one drug made him gain 75 pounds. Severe side effects often cause patients to stop taking medication.

For now, doctors seem to have found one that helps Garrett. Since March, Garrett has been at a Maryland research center that looks into the relationship between metabolism, tobacco and schizophrenia.

After a violent visit in August, Garrett, 21, had not been home until Easter. During the recent visit, he played basketball, Yahtzee and Wii bowling with his family.

"He was able to carry on a conversation and play card games," Kanyuch said. "He was interacting."

At home, surrounded by reminders all his past achievements, Garrett said: "Mom, I was on the top of the world. Now I'm in the gutter."

His mother disagreed: "Look at it as an opportunity."

"What?" he said.

"It's not an opportunity everyone would jump at," she told Garrett. "But as you rehabilitate, as you grow an insight into your illness, there may be things you deal with forever. But you've had significant experiences that you may be able to use to help other people. There's no place where insight and advocacy [for mental health] is needed more than in politics, which is what you wanted to do."

A life with schizophrenia won't easy, but some with the disorder have graduated from college, earned doctorates and lead enriched lives, she told Garrett.

"He doesn't understand the courage he has."