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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.
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.