The Cannabilism of Rudy Eugene Part II
Often, people think Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is about a lack of attention. However, one cool and lesser known symptom of ADHD is called hyper-focus or perseveration. This difficulty in task switching has lead me down a lot of rabbit holes, but rabbit holes are cool because that is where the rabbits are.
This morbid rabbit is the story of Rudy Eugene, termed the “Miami Cannibal” and the bizarre bath salts panic that came and went about a decade ago. This is part 2 in of this event and subsequent chaos and you can find the first part here.
Making The “Miami Cannibal”
On May 6, 2012 Rudy Eugene left his Miami home for the last time in the early morning to meet a friend. Clutching his Bible, Rudy kissed his girlfriend, “I’m going to be late. I love you and I’ll be back”. Rudy never made it back home. Instead, he left behind a bewildering story of violence intertwined with religion, drugs, voodoo, cannibalism, racism, and media sensationalism.
The story of Rudy Eugene, later deemed the “Miami Cannibal”, illustrates how outlier events are used to spread fear and hysteria about racial minorities and drugs. This age-old formula takes a kernel of fact and amplifies it through the megaphone of conjecture and nonsense based on current social fears and peddles those to the masses. Sadly, for over a century, nothing has generated more fear than portraying drug crazed black people.
At 5:00 am on May 6, Rudy Eugene searched his closet. He grabbed his bible and a journal as he left his home in a hurry at 5:30am. The timeline of his descent into infamy is murky but by 2:13 pm he was dead. His journey ended with his lifeless naked body baking on a Miami sidewalk; his teeth still clenched the flesh scraps he had torn from his victim’s face. Both men laid in a grotesque pool of shared blood dotted by tatters of flesh, face chunks, and eyeball meat. The victim of the attack was fully conscious as his head was chewed into a bloody stump, all that remained of his face was his beard. Eugene was dead from gunshot wounds.
His death, and the ruthless mutilation of his victim, lead to various theories including voodoo, demonic possession, nightshade zombification, mad cow disease, schizophrenia, and drug induced psychosis. Eyewitness accounts, police reports, and family testimony provide glimpses into Rudy Eugene and his final hours, but the causes of his actions remain unclear.
Eugene’s car broke down at around 11 am. He spent an hour walking around his car trying to get it working. After hitchhiking to Miami Beach, bible still in hand, Rudy encountered Ronald Poppo, a 65-year-old homeless man on a public sidewalk. Although media outlets reported that Eugene and Poppo had previously met, Poppo denies any prior encounters. They would exchange small talk for several minutes before the unprovoked attack began that left Poppo blind and disfigured.
Ronald Poppo after multiple lifesaving surgeries
The attack was unpredictable and unrelenting. The 18 minutes of brutality were caught on film outside the Miami Herald building where Eugene slammed Poppo to the pavement, choked him, gouged out his eyes, and proceeded to chew off most of his face including his nose. Police arrived on the gruesome scene and commanded Eugene to stop. Instead, he looked up at the officer, growled, and continued chewing on Poppo’s face. He was shot five times and killed.
Retracing Eugene’s final day yielded 5 empty water bottles in his car, and a trail of bible verses strewn along his sidewalk death bed.
Eugene’s car broke down at 11 am.
The conclusion of this story will explore the social and political context and fallout of this story; and what we can learn from our ongoing consumption of nonsense.
