To begin with, one former North Miami Beach football player was no angel. Having worked a series of odd jobs around Miami over the past ten years, he was known as a petty criminal. In the span of a decade, he has chalked up a dozen or so arrests, usually for minor drug offenses.
But we reckon his drug addiction got a little bit too serious when he was arrested in 2008 after threatening to kill his mother. And even then, he was difficult to subdue because the Miami police had to Taser him three times before placing him under arrest.
That should’ve set off warning bells loud and clear. But no.
Until the fateful day, on the 26th of May, when Rudy Eugene was finally shot dead. Cause? Well, for lack of better description, for being a zombie.
31-year-old Rudy spent the morning driving around Miami Beach aimlessly before his car broke down. After that, he abandoned the vehicle and decided to walk. For some odd reason, maybe the weather, he began to strip off his clothes, scattering them along Miami’s MacArthur Causeway. Soon after, he spotted 65-year-old Ronald Poppo, a homeless man who was innocently taking a nap in the shade.
What transpired next is really beyond us, or anyone else, but it seems that Rudy somehow decided that it was a good day to dine on human flesh. He pounced on Ronald, punching him and stripping the man’s pants before gnawing off the homeless man’s face. And mind you, this is in broad daylight and in full view of all the cars and cyclists on the busy causeway.
For 18 grisly minutes, Rudy bit and chewed away ruthlessly, while shocked passersby called the police to report what they saw. Miami police officer Jose Rivera then arrived at the scene and used a loudspeaker to call for Rudy to stop.
He didn’t.
Jose knew he had to fire. And who wouldn’t you, if a man with pieces of flesh in his mouth growled at you? Jose fired at Rudy at least four times before Rudy dropped. The attack ceased, and Rudy was dead.
The gory incident has been put under heavy investigation and some have speculated that Rudy was under the influence of drugs – the kind that sometimes cause violent episodes. No drugs, however, were found on the scene.
Miami authorities now depend on the results from toxicology tests of Rudy’s blood for the answer to this gruesome zombie apocalypse:
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Meanwhile, Ronald Poppo is resting in a Miami hospital, in critical condition but expected to survive.
