Miami's McArthur Causeway became the scene of a gruesome crime this Memorial Day weekend in what is being dubbed the Causeway cannibal crime and it appears bath salts may have played a role.
Two naked men were locked at the face literally when a police officer responding to the scene had to draw his weapon and fire to stop one man from killing the other—and eating his face.
And no, this wasn't a zombie movie. It really happened.
The Miami-Dade Medical Examiner's Office identified the naked face-eating attacker as 31-year-old Rudy Eugene on Sunday night, according to CBS Miami, who said the suspect cannibal may have been homeless at the time of the crime.
The Causeway cannibal looked up with blood on his face and growled when asked to stop by police arriving on the scene located at Miami's McArthur Causeway.
As one would expect, the officer, shaken by what he saw happening, and unable to get one man to stop attacking the other, had no choice but to open fire, resulting in the face-eating attacker's death.
The victim was taken to Jackson Memorial Hospital, where Dr. Paul Adams, one of the hospital's emergency physicians, was able to shed some light on why both men may have been naked, as well as the reason the crime of cannibalism occurred.
Dr. Adams said that a drug known on the streets now as "bath salts" rises the body's core temperature, which can explain the shedding of clothes.
Factor in the heat one would expect to be endured by a homeless man living in Miami, in and around the McArthur Causeway, and you have a logical reason for the nakedness, even if sex were not a possibility.
In addition to body heat, however, this new LSD drug also does what the old PCP used to do: It makes users more aggressive, including using their jaws as weapons, and it gives them unusual amounts of strength, while also causing delirium to some extent.
Now it is a little bit more understandable why a Miami-Dade police officer came upon two naked men at the McArthur Causeway, with one tearing the flesh off the face of the other with his bare teeth and refusing to stop when ordered to by the officer.
What isn't clear, however, is what the police, fire department, and hospital emergency workers plan to do to address this aggressive, violent behavior Dr. Adams says is a growing problem for emergency personnel to deal with due to "bath salts" use.
"It's dangerous for the police," Dr. Adams said, and "It's dangerous for the firefighters."
But police carry a firearm they can use, as this officer had to do. And firefighters have those thick suits and helmets to protect them.
"It's dangerous for the hospital workers taking care of them because they come in, they have to be restrained both chemically and physically and you're asking for someone to get hurt," Dr. Adams said.
And the doctor is right, telling how it required six of the hospital's security officers to restrain one individual on the new LSD drug making the Miami rounds.
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Comments: 7 ( 1 removed by Hillary Hill )
It will be interesting to learn if the homeless victim had also taken the drug, explaining his own lack of clothing, or if more was involved in this storyline than is currently known.
Sad story. Why do you call this LSD? It sounds like a completely different drug to me. I haven't researched yet but am curious if you know whether bath salts are hallucinogenic. For example, I could also believe that the same symptoms and behaviors as exhibited by this sick individual could be caused by uncontrollable intense rage for instance, as opposed to lsd-esque hallucinations.