Miami face-chewing victim: attacker Rudy Eugene 'ripped me to ribbons'

A homeless man whose face was chewed off in an attack on a Miami causeway has described how his assailant "just ripped me to ribbons" before police shot him dead.

Ronald Poppo, who lost an eye and most of his facial features in the May attack, told detectives that he believed Rudy Eugene had "a bad day on the beach," causing him to launch the brutal assault.

"He attacked me. He just ripped me to ribbons. He chewed up my face," Poppo, 65, told Detective Frank Sanchez of Miami police in his first interview last month, the transcript of which has just been released.

"He mashed my face into the sidewalk. My face is all bent and bashed up. My eyes … my eyes got plucked out. He was strangling me in wrestling holds, at the same time he was picking my eyes out."

Poppo was unable to offer any reason why Eugene, a 31-year-old Miami native of Haitian descent, had singled him out, but said his attacker was "in kind of a glad mood for a while" before suddenly turning on him.

"For a very short amount of time, I thought he was a good guy," he said. "But he just went and turned berserk. He apparently didn't have a good day at the beach and I guess he took it out on me or something. I don't know.

"He turned quite vicious after a minute or two, and he started to rip me apart. He just started to scream. And he was talking kind of funny talk for a while, too. That I was gonna die. And he was gonna die. He must have been souped up on something.

"What could provoke an attack of that type? I didn't curse at the guy or say anything mean or nasty."

The early-afternoon attack, which was captured on video by security cameras overlooking Miami's MacArthur Causeway, ended only when police officer Jose Ramirez fired five shots at Eugene, who was naked having discarded all of his clothes as he walked from his car that he abandoned nearby.

At the time, police and doctors speculated that Eugene was probably under the influence of a mind-altering drug, with bath salts — a synthetic substance with effects similar to LSD — the chief suspect.

But toxicology tests on Eugene's body revealed only evidence of recent marijuana use and, contrary to reports that he had ripped strips from Poppo's face with his teeth and swallowed them, no human skin was found in his stomach.

Larry Vega, a passing cyclist who witnessed the attack, likened the encounter to a scene from a zombie film. "The guy was like tearing him to pieces with his mouth, so I told him: 'Get off!'" Vega told a Miami TV station.

"He just kept eating the other guy away, like ripping his skin. The police officer told him several times to get off and the guy just stood his head up like that with a piece of flesh in his mouth and growled. The guy, he was like a zombie, blood dripping. It was intense."

Doctors say Poppo has maintained a positive attitude and had recovered well from the attack, in which he lost his left eye, probably the sight in his right and most of the rest of his face. But he will need to stay in a rehabilitation facility for the foreseeable future and faces the likelihood of months of reconstructive surgery.

In the police interview he remains calm, thanking Miami police for saving his life and giving a mostly coherent account of his memory of the attack, although some of his assertions — such as Eugene hitchhiking from Miami Beach to the mainland — remain at odds with what investigators believe.

Poppo also recalled Eugene wearing a green shirt and shorts, even though he was naked during the attack. He told police how he heard a car dropping Eugene off and said they then spent several minutes chatting. "He said he didn't like the beach for something. He said he wasn't scoring there. He is in kind of a flustered mode about it, I think."

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