New drug on the market leads to violent outcomes

Life often imitates art. The clichéd saying has been around as long as one can remember, but never in the modern history of violence has the saying rung as horrifyingly true as it did on the warm sunny day of May in Miami, when Rudy Eugene was shot dead by a police officer.

On 26^th May, Rudy Eugene, 31, attended the Urban Beach weekend – a Memorial Day event in Miami Beach – on his own after his friends refused to accompany him to the party. Afterwards, he went back to his car but was unable to start it, so he decided to walk back home, a move that would soon terrorise the Miami locals and inspire a trend among experimental drug users.

In a fatal decision, at the party Rudy Eugene had taken a new form of powerful drug commonly known as “bath salts” which, when taken, stimulates the central nervous system causing hallucinations and even psychosis among other things.

The effect of the drug was nowhere near wearing off when he left the party and walked back home.

Still under the influence of the drug, he encountered a homeless man by the name of Ronald Poppo whom he started attacking. The unprovoked attack lasted almost 18 minutes within which Eugene had turned into a “zombie-like” character, using his teeth to bite on his victim like a carnivore until Miami police officer Jose Rivera intervened and put an end to Poppo’s horrific ordeal by shooting Eugene to death. 

Ronald Poppo, once a star student at a prestigious New York school, was saved but 75% of his face was wounded, to the extent that he was left potentially blind due to the severe damage from the attack.

This was by no means the first time the veil of cannibalism has been lifted in modern society, but it was definitely the first time that the world was able to see and worryingly increase the infatuation with real-life zombies and “bath salts” – the drug that put Rudy Eugene in a zombie-like state.

No sooner had the news broke out than a prank video surfaced on YouTube. Imitating the Miami zombie killer, it saw the prankster scaring off Florida residents in what the critics described as a “classless act”.

The worst of the repercussions, however, was the surge in the intake of bath salts among the drug users who were looking for the other worldly experience parallel to the state Rudy Eugene was in during the savage attack.

Since then numerous stories involving the intake of bath salts have appeared in the news and they all have the recurring theme, “violence”.

Brandon De Leon, 21, was arrested earlier this month for disturbing customers in a Miami fast food restaurant. His behaviour was influenced by the bath salts he had taken prior to the offence and tried to bite the officer and threatened to eat his captor yelling, “I will eat you”.

David Schrader was arrested for trying to attack his neighbour while high on bath salts. Meanwhile, a New York woman high on bath salts was killed after police tasered her following their response to an emergency call stating the woman was attacking her three-year-old son.

While not all the attackers turned into a zombie-like state, it is evident that each of the aggressor‘s violent nature was triggered to the max by the drugs, attacking anyone in their sight regardless of their relationship to them. Eugene, under the influence of “bath salts”, attacked a random homeless guy, Schrader his next door neighbour and the New York woman her own son.

However, worryingly enough Brandon De Leon did show signs of cannibalistic instinct Eugene had gained as a result of “bath salts” intake, raising the possibility that some users may indeed suffer greater paranoia transcending their humanity to a zombie-like state.

Rajeeb Gurung

To learn more about bath salts click here.