RONALD POPPO, LEFT, WAS THE VICTIM OF A HORRIFIC CANNIBAL ATTACK AT THE HANDS OF RUDY EUGENE IN MIAMI. PICTURE: MIAMI-DADE POLICE DEPT SUPPLIED
THE homeless man who had most of his face chewed off has spoken for the first time about the horrific cannibal attack.
Ronald Poppo, 65, has undergone skin grafts to repair the mutilations left when the crazed man chewed into his face beside a Miami freeway on May 26.
“He just ripped me to ribbons," the 65-year-old Poppo told police in an interview obtained by CBS Miami.
"He chewed up my face. He plucked out my eyes ... And basically that's all there is to say about it."
Poppo was left blind, missing his nose and covered in a patchwork of mangled flesh.
Homeless in Miami for decades, he was lazing on the MacArthur Causeway's Downtown exit ramp when attacked by 31-year-old Rudy Eugene, who had stripped off his clothes as he walked over the causeway after spending the Saturday morning on Miami Beach.
Poppo said Eugene, whom he did not recall having ever met before, approached him on the sidewalk and was "chummy" before he "snapped," strangling him in "wrestling holds" and picking at Poppo's eyes.
“For a very short amount of time I thought he was a good guy,” Poppo said in the interview, which was conducted on July 19.
"But he just went and turned berserk. He apparently didn’t have a good day at the beach and he – he was coming back. And I guess he took it out - took it out on me - or something. I don’t know.”
The gruesome 18-minute attack, which was captured on surveillance video, ended when a Miami police officer shot and killed Eugene as he ripped at Poppo's face.
What can provoke an attack of that type?" Poppo said. "I certainly didn't curse at the guy, or say anything mean or nasty to him."
Poppo thought Eugene was on drugs - a toxicology report revealed only marijuana in his body:
"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. He - he had some kind [of] desperate preoccupation of that type."
Poppo said Eugene told him he didn't enjoy his morning on Miami Beach because "he said he wasn’t scoring there, or something. He went to the Beach to score, or something. He is in ... kind of...flustered mode about it."
The Miami Herald reported that Poppo has reconnected with his sister Annette, who told CBS Miami in May that her family had assumed he was dead.
“I asked [the social worker] if he wants to talk to me, and she said, 'He talks about you all the time.' I said, '‘Really?’'" Antoinette Poppo told the Herald.
"He asked me how the family was. He wants to know if I’m ever going to move to Florida. He said he’d like to see me. I would love to see him, but I have Parkinson’s."
A fund set up to assist Poppo through the hospital had raised $110,700 through mid-July.
"I thank the Miami Police Department for saving my life," Poppo said before ending the interview; "That’s about the best I could sum it up as. If they didn’t get there in a nick of time, I would've definitely been in worse shape. Possibly I’d be DOA."
original: http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/true-crime-scene/miami-cannibal-attack-victim-ronald-poppo-recalls-attack-by-naked-man-who-chewed-off-most-of-his-face/story-fnat7jnn-1226446854054
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