It seems I’ve been reporting on “bath salts” and insanely violent, terrifying stories related to them for a year now. In reality, it’s only been since Memorial Day, and now it looks like that first holiday weekend story–of Rudy Eugene attacking and eating 75% of a homeless man’s face in Miami–doesn’t even have anything to do with bath salts.
The medical examiner has confirmed, after much speculation, that Eugene was definitely not high on bath salts, or any other synthetic drug, when he attacked Ronald Poppo. In fact, the only thing in his system was marijuana.
The official report says they specifically tested Eugene’s system for bath salts and found not a trace.
“The department has also sought the assistance of an outside forensic toxicology reference laboratory, which has confirmed the absence of “bath salts,” synthetic marijuana and LSD,” the report said.
Something doesn’t add up here, and since at least part of this attack was caught on surveillance camera, it’s hard to imagine that officials got their story mixed up–either purposely or on accident. Eugene reportedly displayed all the signs of being high on bath salts: violence, rage, the urge to bite and chew on human skin (although he didn’t eat any of it, but spit it out instead), and an apparent feeling of invincibility, as well as displaying an almost super-human bout of strength that made him hard to take down.
Unless the victim, Ronald Poppo–who is slowly recovering in a Florida hospital–has any more to add to the story, it’s likely we will never know what made Eugene fly into his cannibalistic rage.
