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ZOMBIE OUTBREAK – Face-chewing victim speaks out in police interview
MIAMI — A homeless man whose face was mostly chewed off in a bizarre assault 
alongside a busy South Florida highway told police that his attacker “just ripped me to ribbons.”
In a recorded interview with investigators, Ronald Poppo said the man who approached him initially seemed friendly. Then the man, Rudy Eugene, seemed to become angry about something that had happened on Miami Beach, where thousands were partying through the Memorial Day weekend.
“For a while he was acting nice. Then he got flustered. He probably remembered something that happened on the beach and was not happy about it,” Poppo told investigators in the interview that was taped July 19 and first reported Wednesday by Miami news station WFOR-TV (http://cbsloc.al/OQgwOt).
Poppo said Eugene then “turned berserk” and attacked with his bare hands, screaming that both men would die.
“He just ripped me to ribbons. He chewed up my face. He plucked out my eyes. Basically, that’s all there is to say about it,” Poppo said.
Poppo, 65, remains in a long-term care facility after losing an eye, his eyebrows, his nose and parts of his forehead and right cheek in the May 26 attack. His other eye was severely damaged.
Doctors at Jackson Memorial Hospital’s Ryder Trauma Center said last month that Poppo was in good spirits, talking and walking around, but would need several more surgeries before he could explore the options for reconstructing his face.
Eugene, 31, was shot and killed by a Miami police officer during the attack on the Macarthur Causeway just off downtown Miami. Lab tests found only marijuana in Eugene’s system, but no other drugs or alcohol.
Poppo said Eugene had said something about not being able “to score,” adding that Eugene “must have been souped up on something.”
In the police interview, Poppo sometimes seems confused about some details of the attack. He described Eugene wearing a green shirt and getting out of a car, but surveillance video recorded from security cameras on The Miami Herald building showed a naked Eugene walking up to Poppo as cars and bicyclists zipped by. Poppo was reclining on the sidewalk near the parking garage where he lived.
Police asked Poppo whether he provoked Eugene.
“What could provoke an attack of that type?” Poppo said. “I didn’t curse at the guy or say anything mean or nasty.”
Poppo also thanked the police for saving his life, saying the officer who shot Eugene arrived in the nick of time.
Zombie Apocalypse Has Begun! PREPARE PREPARE – Outbreaks Occurring Nationwide
Beginning in May, on a sunny day in Miami, Florida, America began living its very own
Zombie fantasy. As you know, there are thousands of homeless people in the world. Well 65 year old Ronald Poppo, who was one of these unfortunates, was walking in an alley of down town Miami, when 31 year old Rudy Eugene decided he looked delicious. Eugene was found naked under a bridge, chewing on Poppo’s face. The Miami police yelled at Eugene to stop, but he wouldn’t and for Poppo’s safety, the police shot at Eugene. They shot at him in the chest several times but he was still alive, after shooting him even more, Eugene dropped to the ground dead. Poppo is now in a hospital in Miami. He is doing fine and is to have physical therapy.
Poppo is not the only zombie victim in the U.S. there was a woman who ate part of her baby’s brain, three of its toes, and part of its intestines. There was another college student who killed and ate his roommate. That definitely makes me not want to live in dorms. There was another attack where the man threw his own intestines at the police officers. Finally, a Canadian porn star lost it and ate someone, oh and also threatened the Prime Minister.
Yes, there are finally Zombies in North America and who knows if they are in any other part of the world. There is nothing we can do about it. Let’s face it; we all know that this country is all pretty screwed up. There are some crazy people in the country.
People are starting to say that the Zombie apocalypse is almost here. When I was younger, my mother joked around about the zombie apocalypse. I got really scared. Little did know that I was going to write an article about Zombies. People are freaking out about this when you are actually pretty safe. There is a 0.25 in a 10 percent chance that you would be a Zombie victim. But just in case, you should be ready for the Zombies next attack.
Look, everyone knows that the Zombies are coming and there is nothing we can do about it. Just be prepared. This is the updated list of the do’s and don’ts, and how to tell if Zombies are in your town.
Let’s start.
How do you know there are zombies in your town?
Well, if you start hearing crazy people chanting to themselves, then yeah they are on the verge on Zombie-hood (or they are in a popular teen cult…either way, probably bad news). We all know that the crazy people are going to become zombies first because they were neglected and left to live on the streets. You can also tell there are Zombies in the town when you hear screaming and police cars all night long. And the final way to see if there are Zombies in your town is if you see a lot of new (but empty) graves. That means one of three things:
A- The Zombies have been crawling out of their graves.
B- There have been a lot of deaths, which means that they died from Zombies eating them.
C- That pesky teen cult thing again.
How do you prepare for a Zombie apocalypse?
Two words: Get Weapons.
When picking your weapons, you want to get something that you can shoot or throw or stab them with from a long distance because you don’t want to get the Zombie juice on you. The main weapon that you want is a gun. When you get a gun, your first choice is a hand gun. Hand guns can hold more bullets and you can empty and re-lode fast. They are easy for travel and you can put them almost anywhere. You want to make sure that you have more than one gun because the gun can get lost or broken. If you can’t get the gun, then you want a machete. Go ahead and cut off their heads. Make sure that you don’t get the Zombie juice in your blood through a cut or something…it will turn you into a Zombie. You can use pretty much anything, just kill the brain. Cut off the head then smash it. If you want you can burn it. Just don’t let any other Zombie eat the body because then the Zombie will get stronger.
After you get your weapons, you want to get a safe spot. I would say a basement because Zombies can’t lift heavy things or their limbs will fall off. Or you’re going to want to hide in an attic. You want to be as far away from a graveyard as possible. Try getting a cabin in the middle of the woods. Make sure that you have food storage because you don’t know how long you will be there.
How you know you got infected and what to do.
If you got any Zombie juice on you, and you didn’t disinfect it by burning the area you are probably on your way to being a Zombie. If it gets into your blood then kill yourself if you don’t what to become a Zombie. If you decide to kill yourself then you should knock yourself out and have someone throw you in a fire so you know that you won’t become a Zombie. If the Zombie juice gets in your system without you knowing the symptoms of Zombieitis, you’re going to want to go through this check list:
- Are you choking on nothing?
- Do you have green splotches on your skin, dizziness, and craving for raw meat? Especially Brains?
- Is your skin falling off like a leper?
If you said yes to any of these, you may want to kill yourself.
But you never know when they are going to crawl out of their grave…OH WAIT THEY HAVE!
Y’all had better stop reading and start killing the Zombies
2nd Miami Zombie Attack – Miami homeless man high on ‘bath salts’ growls, tries to bite police officer and smashes his head against cell (AND he’d drunk Four Loko too)
2nd Miami Zombie Attack – Miami homeless man high on ‘bath salts’ growls, tries to bite police officer and smashes his head against cell (AND he’d drunk Four Loko too)
A homeless man high on drugs and drunk on Four Loko growled and tried to bite off a police officer’s hand after he was arrested for disturbing customers in a Miami fast food restaurant.
The incident comes just two weeks after Rudy Eugene chewed the face off a homeless man in Miami. The frenzied 18-minute attack only ended when police shot Eugene dead.
In this new case, Brandon De Leon, 21, repeatedly banged his head against the patrol car’s Plexiglas and yelled, ‘I’m going to eat you.’ Both De Leon and Eugene are believed to have been under the influence of a potent drug, known as bath salts.
Scroll down for video
The shocking crimes have led to a safety warning issued to local police officers when they deal with Miami’s homeless population.
North Miami Beach police spotted De Leon having an argument with another man outside a Boston Market restaurant on Saturday.
According to an arrest report, the men’s fight blocked the restaurant entrance so no-one could come in or leave.
Officers arrested De Leon and Brian Yerdon, 33, for disorderly conduct.
Crime scene: Police officers arrested De Leon after his altercation with Yerdon blocked patrons from entering or leaving this Boston Market restaurant. De Leon had rum and Four Loko on him when he was arrested
At one point De Leon said ‘F*** you’ to officers, showing them his middle finger, the report states.
At the police station, De Leon tried to bite the officer who was taking his blood pressure and tending to his self-inflicted wounds. The police report noted that he ‘growled and opened and closed his jaw slamming his teeth like an animal would.’
Inside his cell, De Leon was put in leg restraints and a bite mask after he continued to bark, growl and bash his head, reported NBC Miami.
De Leon was found to be on bath salts – also known as Cloud 9 – and blood tests revealed levels of cannabis and Xanax. The tests also revealed an alcohol level of .29.
De Leon faces charges including disorderly conduct and resisting an officer with violence. He remains in jail on a $5,500 bond.
In court on Monday De Leon told the judge he could not remember what happened.
‘If I can say something your honor, I have no recollection of anything that happened that night,’ he said. It is not known whether De Leon has a lawyer.
Bath salts, referred to on the street as ‘the new LSD’ and sold as a cocaine substitute, contain amphetamine-like chemicals such as methylenedioxypyrovalerone.
Users of the drug report to feeling no pain. Its effects include paranoia, hallucinations, convulsions and psychotic episodes.
Toxicology results will determine whether Rudy Eugene was on bath salts when he pounced on Ronald Poppo, a 65-year-old homeless man he found sleeping on elevated train tracks by a Miami highway on May 26.
Footage of the attack shows Eugene stripping and punching his victim before he straddles him and starts to eat his face off.
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.
Watch video here
Miami ‘zombie-like’ attacks continue? Man on ‘Cloud 9′ growls, tries to bite North Miami Beach cop
NORTH MIAMI BEACH, Fla. (WSVN) — Officers say a man in police custody has an entire department shocked after he allegedly growled and tried to bite an officer’s hand off; an eerie resemblance to the cannibal attack on a South Florida causeway.
Two North Miami Beach officers were eating at a Boston Market in North Miami Beach on Saturday evening, when Brandon DeLeon, a homeless man, walked into the restaurant and began to yell obscenities at them.
DeLeon then threatened to fight the police officers, forcing them to place him under arrest. But it was the events after DeLeon was put into a holding cell that has officers very concerned.
According to an officer’s safety bulletin, “While at the holding cell, DeLeon banged his head repeatedly inside the holding cell. DeLeon growled at officers in the booking area like a rabid dog. DeLeon attempted to bite Officer Ruiz’s hand off.”
The incident sounds eerily similar to the case of Rudy Eugene who, when confronted by Miami Police under the MacArthur Causeway while ripping the flesh off of homeless man Ronald Poppo, allegedly started to growl.
It has been speculated that Eugene, who chewed off 75 percent of Poppo’s face, had been on drugs at the time of the incident before being shot and killed by police.
Authorities believe DeLeon was on drugs when he tried to bite the officer’s hand off and have advised officers to be extra careful when it comes to the homeless community in South Florida. The officer’s safety bulletin goes on to read: “It was later discovered DeLeon had taken a synthetic drug named Cloud 9. This bears resemblance to the incident that occurred in the City of Miami last week when a male ate another man’s face. Please be careful when dealing with our homeless population during your patrols.”
Cloud 9 is a synthetic drug with terrible side effects such as rage, hallucinations and paranoia.
During a bond hearing on Monday, DeLeon told a judge he couldn’t remember the events. “I have no recollection of anything that happened that night,” he said.
According to 7News sources, the day after the incident with DeLeon, officers stopped some people in the homeless community and found the synthetic drug.
The concern among law enforcement is that Cloud 9 is becoming the drug of choice within the homeless community, and the overriding concern is the violent side effects.
North Miami Beach Police also said DeLeon had the caffeinated, alcoholic beverage Four Loko in his system.
DeLeon remains in jail under a $5,500 bond.
Troubled lives clashed in ‘Miami zombie’ face-eating attack
MIAMI — Saturday’s horror-movie episode on Miami’s MacArthur Causeway brought together two troubled men, one who was struggling to get his life on track, another who’d given up trying.
Rudy Eugene, 31, had been seeking spiritual guidance in Scripture. On May 24, two days before he would viciously attack a homeless man named Ronald Edward Poppo, Eugene attended a Bible-study session at a friend’s North Miami Beach home.
Recently, Eugene posted a verse from Psalm 59 on his Facebook page: “Deliver me from my enemies, O my Lord; Defend me from those who rise up against me. For the Lord God is my defense. …”
Friend Bobby Chery said he, Eugene and another friend discussed that day what they could do to become better men according to the word of God, and that Eugene vowed to give up marijuana.
That same Thursday, Miami Police rousted Poppo from one of the last places he called home: the top floor of the parking garage at Jungle Island, the Watson Island botanical and wildlife attraction.
Outreach workers from the Miami Homeless Assistance Program found him there and offered help, said Ronald Book, chairman of the Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust.
But after Poppo became “belligerent and aggressive,” the outreach team called police. Officers issued Poppo, who had turned 65 a week earlier, a “trespassing after warning” citation.
“He grabbed his box of stuff and went off,” said Book. Outreach workers reported he was “cursing and claiming discrimination.”
About 2 p.m. on Saturday, a naked Rudy Eugene grabbed Poppo near the causeway’s west end, stripped off his clothes, beat him, bit him, and gnawed off his face.
More than 15 minutes into the attack, a police officer arrived and shot Eugene to death. Poppo remains in critical condition at Jackson Memorial Hospital’s Ryder Trauma Center.
The crazed assault shocked nearly everyone who knew Eugene.
Johansen Aurelus, a childhood friend, called Eugene “preacher” because he liked sharing Bible verses with friends and kept his Bible handy.
Aurelus attended Bethel Baptist Church with Eugene when they were teens. Back then, Aurelus said, Eugene would ask questions about the pastor’s sermons and how they applied to his life.
Over the years Rudy had some run-ins with the police for marijuana possession and a domestic dispute. Most recently, he had difficulty holding a job, friends say.
Eugene’s stepfather, Melimon Charles, of North Miami, said that Eugene “is not the kind of devil who goes out and kill people like they are showing on the news. He’s a fine boy. He was raised in the church. He was in the choir.”
Trouble may have started about the time Eugene learned Melimon was not his biological father, in ninth or tenth grade, although Melimon had been with Eugene’s mom Ruth since the boy was 2.
Rudy “was angry because he was looking for his father,” Charles said. “His father passed away and he didn’t know. And I didn’t know anything about it. I didn’t even have a picture to show him.”
Soon after, he said, Eugene accepted “the truth and we were doing fine.”
But at 17, Eugene moved out of his home, without telling his stepfather. He transferred from North Miami Beach High School to North Miami High.
If he was upset over “family issues,” it was because of his parents’ divorce, which happened after he was an adult, Charles said.
Charles dismisses gossip that Rudy was the target of a voodoo curse.
“Nobody went to Haiti and did anything to him,” he insisted.
Though Eugene had stopped attending church regularly, he maintained his quest for spirituality. He regularly sent inspirational text messages to his friends. And on Facebook, he mentions “Zoe Life” several times — a phrase both associated with Haitian life and with born-again Christians.
His final post, on May 18, proclaimed: “ZOE LIFE IS ETERNAL!!!!!!!!!”
Friends posted tributes on his page.
“Damn, I still can’t believe it, out of all people, YOU! You have been a great friend to me, and for that you will always be missed!” said Meli Mel Rivera.
Ranessia Rollins posted that Eugene was at her house on Friday and kissed her cheek.
All of his friends expressed disbelief and solidarity.
Pudding Sabali said: “They’re telling me (us) that we shouldn’t have any grief for you dying. But it’s hard to not have the deepest warm feeling when it comes to you … just a young man misunderstood … God have mercy on your soul.”
Understanding Ronald Poppo is harder because he lived anonymously for so long.
Ron Book said that outreach workers had been offering him services since Dec. 27, 1999. At the time, he said he hadn’t lived at a permanent address since 1970.
Poppo said he’d become homeless outside of Florida, slept on Watson Island and abused alcohol.
He stayed in an emergency shelter for 141 days, during which he saw a counselor once, according to assistance program records.
Four years later, Miami police took him back to the shelter. Starting on Oct. 6, 2003, Poppo stayed for 10 days, and again met once with a counselor.
Between that stay and his last encounter with outreach workers on May 24th, Poppo may have spent less than a week living inside.
Records show he stayed twice at Camillus House in 2004, on Jan. 26 and July 20, and once at the Homeless Assistance Center on Nov. 16. His last stay: Jan. 23, 2005, under a cold weather sheltering program.
On Nov. 11, 2004, some kind of “mental crisis” brought him to Jackson’s crisis intervention unit, but an assistance program report is unclear about whether he stayed overnight.
Outreach teams approached him three times in 2005 and 2006, but he refused help.
“During one of the contacts he became angry and started throwing rocks at the outreach staff,” Book said.
Among Miami’s 240 to 260 chronic homeless people, “sometimes after three, 10, 30 attempts, we get a guy or woman to come in,” Book said. “There are people for different reasons, it takes them that long, maybe never, to get off the streets.”
Details of Poppo’s life have been surfacing in bits since the assault. The 1964 graduate of New York’s elite Stuyvesant High School grew up in Brooklyn, according to long-lost sister Antoinette Poppo.
Neither she nor Poppo’s two brothers have seen him in more than 30 years, she said, and none of them plan a trip to Miami. Two siblings live in New York, another in California.
Their late father was a shipfitter, she said, a structural worker in a shipyard. She believes that “Ronnie” attended both parents’ funerals.
She couldn’t explain the conditions that led to her brother’s downward spiral and his estrangement from the family.
“I’m 12 years older,” she said. “He was 6 years old when I got married and left the house.”
But she called him “a very intelligent boy and a gentle person.”
For a time in the late ’80s, Poppo worked as a roadie for the band SKUM, which spent about two years in Miami before breaking up around 1990.
They’re reuniting for a documentary, said former lead singer Hart Baur, of Miami. He said that part of the band’s philosophy was to hire homeless guys to carry equipment.
In an email from North Carolina, former bass player Patrick Burke, a former Miamian, said band members would see “homeless guys panhandling, so we’d take them to Burger King, and say, ‘You want to work, take out the garbage and sweep up the parking lot?’ ”
They’d give them a few bucks, booze and dinner.
There were moments of lucidity with Poppo, whom he called Ernie, “because I thought he looked like Ernest Hemingway,” Burke said.
Other band members called him Pops, Burke said, because he looked old.
Poppo was hanging out “under a bridge off Biscayne Boulevard” when the band met him, Burke said. “He loved to drink and we used to always kid him about the fact that homeless people always had the best heads of hair. Pops used to say, “It’s just the lifestyle, man — no bad chemicals on my head.”‘
He was always wearing a Yankee cap, Burke said, “and he would take it off to show his locks to the girls at our shows. … Last time I saw him was at the Grove Cinema in 1989.”
On Thursday, the Jackson Memorial Foundation established a fund for Poppo’s care. Foundation spokesman Larry Clark said that “inquiries have come from all over the country.”
Donations can be made on the foundation’s website, www.jmf.org (click the “Take Action Now” tab, and then click on donations. On the donation page, select “other” in the Contribution Details section and write in “Ronald Poppo”).
Donations by check should be sent to Jackson Memorial Foundation, Park Plaza East, Suite G, 901 N.W. 17th Street, Miami, FL 33136.; write “Ronald Poppo” on the memo line.