- @
- Followers:
No Tweets Found
CNN POLITICS ON FACEBOOK » | CNN POLITICS ON TWITTER »
Face-attack suspect's mother: My son 'was no zombie'
The mother of Rudy Eugene, who was shot and killed by a police officer as he chewed the face off a homeless man in Miami, says her son was "a nice kid" who could have been subdued with a Taser rather than gunfire.
"He was a good kid. He gave me a nice card on Mother’s Day. Everyone says he was a zombie. He was no zombie. That was my son,” the mother, who asked that her name not be revealed, told CNN affliate WFOR.
'Zombie apocalypse' trending as bad news spreads quickly
Eugene, 31, was killed by a police officer on Saturday after an 18-minute attack on a homeless man, identified by police as 65-year-old Ronald Poppo. Video of the incident shows Eugene coming across Poppo on a sidewalk along Miami's MacArthur Causeway, stripping clothes off him and eventually chewing on his face.
Police said Poppo lost 75% of his face in the attack. He was in critical condition at a Miami hospital.
Eugene's mother said police didn't need to shoot her son.
"They could have tased him," she told WFOR. "I saw what happened on TV and I started crying.”
Eugene's girlfriend, who also requested anonymity from WFOR, said the attacker seen in that video was nothing like the man she lived with.
“He loved God. He always read the Bible. He would give you knowledge on the Bible. Everywhere he went his Bible went. When he left he had his Bible in his hand,” the girlfriend is quoted as saying.
“That wasn’t him, that was his body but it wasn’t his spirit. Somebody did this to him,” WFOR quotes her as saying.
Fraternal Order of Police President Armando Aguilar told CNN affiliate WPLG that he suspects Eugene was under the influence of "bath salts," a drug that contains synthetic stimulants that can "cause chest pains, increased blood pressure, increased heart rate, agitation, hallucinations, extreme paranoia, and delusions," according to the National Institute of Drug Abuse.
"He was a nice, outgoing, ready-to-help-anybody kind of guy," Cassandra Metayer, a high school friend of Eugene's, told WFOR. “Someone in their right mind doesn’t do that. This is not the act of a normal person. It has to be someone under the influence."
Sgt. Javier Ortiz, vice president of the Miami Fraternal Order of Police, said officials won't know for certain whether drugs played a role in the attack until toxicology reports are completed in a month or so. But he said police have been seeing increased incidents of drug-induced crime in the area.
On Twitter
On Twitter
@cnnbrk on Twitter
I agree. If the first gunshot had no affect on him what does she think a taser would do? Everyone knows tasers don't have any affect on zombies.
Exactly. It's part of surviving zombies, DOUBLE TAP! Lol
I think the mother should just use the zombie card.
That way her son won't look like an insane druggie cannibal, and we could give her family a little sympathy.
Everyone knows zombies aren't responsible for doing typical zombie things....like eating people's faces.
Isn't sushi supposed to be freshly killed before it's consumed?
If he wasn't a zombie, the why did he not die until shot in the head? Huh? Huh?
A nice, helpful boy doesn't chew the face off another man. This creature did, so... QED. Reports say that the policeman shot the cannibal at least once, perhaps twice and the creature didn't stop. What makes anyone think a taser would have had any effect? If he were to save the victim's life – and perhaps others – the policeman had no choice but to make a kill shot. After all, imagine the firestorm if the policeman had not stopped the monster and he had escaped and gone on to kill/eat/mutilate/whatever other victims?
Jesus was a zombie...
Rationalization, delusion and lack of personal responsibility taken to an all time high. "Nice boys' are definitionally not FACE EATING CANIBALS.
You obviously have too much time on your hands to be posting that completely off topic baseless rhetorical crap. Thanks for wasting our time now go occupy something...
Glad they killed this psycho. There's no telling what this crazy guy was capable of. At least now he won't go to jail for 10 years and get released by our liberal judges. Feel bad for the homeless man who was probably drunk or unconscious when this happened.
Reading the Bible doesn't make you a good person any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.
Oh? A taser could've subdued a man who was so high he started eating a guy's face? I don't think so. This was a textbook example of when a police officer should use deadly force.
yup,if not the cop would have been next.heck when the cop shot him the first time he just looked up and grawled at him...yup remember head shots people...head shots.
"cocain" like substances...yeah um no never heard of anyone doing this on alil coke,or even alot.no there has to be more to this or the stuff in those bath salts are maybe military grade substances that have been released to the public as a test....most if not all hard drugs come from the military and or controlled setting.just food for thought.
Mama, your son was not a zombie. He was a cannibal. Now if we see him doing this again, after being shot dead, THEN he is a zombie. I'm sure he was a nice boy, but not so much a nice man...
Mitt Romney born a unicorn, kangaroo's stalking/attacking people, zombie attacks…Its time to face the fact that the end is very near!
yellow-eyed zombie i says