Zombie's Mom: My Son is “no zombie”

Who Was Causeway Cannibal Rudy Eugene?



MIAMI (CBSMiami) – There are still more questions than answers in the wake of one of South Florida’s most horrific crimes, a vicious and gruesome cannibal attack on a Miami causeway in broad daylight which ended only when a Miami police officer was forced to fire on the man believed to be in the midst of a drug-fueled rage.

Police, relatives and friends are still trying to figure out what would cause Rudy Eugene, 31, to attack a homeless man, a complete stranger, and devour 75-percent of his face before getting shot and killed by a Miami police officer.

His mother is speaking out for the first time, saying she wanted to remember her son’s kindness and telling CBS4′s Peter D’Oench that her son was “no zombie.”

“I feel devastated,” said the mother, asking us not to reveal her name or show her face. “That was not him who was seen on TV doing that. He was a nice kid. 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.”

“I never had any problems with him,” she said. “The police don’t have to shoot him. They could have tased him. I saw what happened on TV and I started crying.”

“He had two baby brothers,” she said, “and they used to go to church all the time together.”

According to Miami-Dade court records, Eugene did have a troubled past and had been arrested for multiple misdemeanors, mostly marijuana-related charges.

Eugene attended North Miami Beach High school in the late 1990s and played football for his high school team.

Jeff Bertani was his football coach in 1998 and 1999. He told D’Oench that Eugene attended the school for the 10th and 11th grades before transferring to Norland High School and later North Miami High School.

“He was just a normal type of kid that we’ve had over the years,” said Bertani. “He was quiet and well mannered. We never really had any problems with him. I’m surprised about what happened, like everyone else. I never noticed anything that would have indicated there would have been a problem. I don’t think anyone could have predicted.”

Friends described him as funny and friendly and they said he did not suffer from any mental illnesses, according to CBS4 News partner The Miami Herald.

“He wasn’t homeless. He had a place to stay. He had a car, and he worked,” Erica Smith told the Herald. She was a close friend and former roommate of Eugene’s. “He had his ups and downs, but he was not an aggressive person. He was really sweet and giving.”

He graduated in 2000. He lived off and on with his mother and friends and did an assortment of odd jobs, from selling CDs to working at McDonald’s and telemarketing. He last worked washing cars at an automobile dealership, Smith said.

Lately, he spoke of buying his own mobile car-wash business. His own late ’90s model Chevrolet Caprice was discovered Tuesday at an impound lot, after it was towed from South Beach. He had gone to South Beach for Urban Beach Weekend on Saturday but CBS4 News learned when the car wouldn’t start, he walked back to the mainland across the MacArthur Causeway.

D’Oench also caught up with Cheryl Seichrist, the business office manager for the Miami Ad School who discovered Eugene’s abandoned car and called for it to be towed away because it was blocking an exit at her business.

“It freaks me out,” she said. “I had no idea it was his car until you came knocking on my door.”

D’Oench also showed Miami Beach Police detectives where the car was found and lead them to Seichrist. They told him their work was part of the overall investigation of Eugene.

READ MORE ABOUT RUDY EUGENE’S LAST HOURS

“He was always looking for ways to make money. Not necessarily illegal, but sometimes he got in trouble with it,” his lifelong friend, Daniel Ruiz told the Herald. “But for Rudy to do something that graphic, that aggressive, that violent, that gruesome — that’s what’s really troubling us. Rudy? Really? Rudy? Naw.”

He said Eugene liked to freestyle rap and listen to music.

“He had his little problems, but nothing too dramatic,” Ruiz said. “He was sane.”

Former classmate Cassandra Metayer agreed.

“This is not his character,” said Metayer, who went to middle school and high school with Eugene. “This type of behavior is very unexpected. He was a good person, a true friend. He was a nice, outgoing ready-to-help-anybody kind of guy. I’m not just saying that; he really was that person.”


Metayer said Eugene, the son of Haitian immigrants, grew up in North Miami Beach. In 2005, he married Metayer’s cousin, Jenny Ductant, but they divorced two years later.

Metayer said the two split because they had taken different paths in life, particularly as Ductant continued her education.

The couple’s 2007 divorce record shows he had no income, and his assets included $2 cash and $50 for a cell phone.

She told one local TV station he had a violent past.

Friends believe drugs are to blame.

“He loved his family, loved his friends,” Metayer said. “It had to be drugs; 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.”

Eugene had repeated trouble with the law.

Florida Department of Law Enforcement records show Eugene was arrested by Miami Beach police on a battery charge when he was 16, but the case was dropped.

In 2004, North Miami Beach Police had to use a Taser to subdue him during a domestic dispute.

In that dispute, police said Eugene yelled at his mother, Ruth Charles, saying “You see what I can do?” and “How do you feel now?” during the attack that saw him break a table and shove her out of the kitchen according to North Miami Beach Police.

When officers confronted Eugene inside the home he asked “What-you-gonna-do?” Eugene refused to leave and told one officer, “I’ll kick your ass,” according to the police report.

Charles told police at the time, “Thank God your [sic] here, he would have killed me. She also told police that Eugene told her, “I’ll put a gun to your head and kill you.”

Click here to read the full police report from 2004
Records show he was arrested seven other times over five years. Court records show that one was for misdemeanor battery, one was for vending near a school, one was for trespassing and four involved marijuana.

His last arrest was in September 2009. In January, the charge was dropped.

Despite his legal troubles and his fondness for smoking marijuana, his friend Erica said he was trying to get his life back together.

“Someone must have given him something really bad. A few days ago he told my brother that he was really depressed and didn’t want to live anymore. He was a guy who just wanted a family and someone to love him.”

Toxicology reports on Eugene’s body have not been completed. Results could take between two weeks and two months.

The head of the Miami Fraternal Order of Police, Armando Aguilar, speculated that he may have been high on LSD or “bath salts,” which can cause psychosis as the body overheats.

Eugene did strip off all of his clothes as he walked from Miami Beach to the mainland over the MacArthur Causeway before encountering 65-year-old Ronald Poppo and beginning the unprovoked, savage attack, an attack that lasted at least 18-minutes and cost Poppo most of his face.

A Miami Herald surveillance video showed Eugene punching Poppo, tearing off his clothes and gnawing at this face before a Miami Police officer shot him at least five times.

READ MORE ABOUT VICTIM RONALD POPPO

Poppo, a homeless man who lives under the Causeway, remains at Jackson Memorial Hospital in critical condition.


http://miami.cbslocal.com/2012/05/30/who-was-causeway-cannibal-rudy-eugene/


The Zombie incident has educated the public that these type of people do exist, and they are VERY dangerous. In the future, when Zombies die fighting with police or store security, we can remind the lynch mob that Zombies are real.


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“It had to be drugs; 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.”

No (*)(*)(*)(*), Sherlock. How bizarre.

 

Is Ronald Poppo white? Just curious.

 

Those OTC bath salts are said to cause homicidal outbursts and hallucinations.

 

The other day I was watching the Henry Lee Lucas & Otis O'Toole mass-murderers accounting of their cannibalism ... including the possibility that Otis O'Toole may have eaten parts of Adam Walsh ...

It'll creep you out ...

 

Bath salt and weirdness:

Man bites car

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/man-bites-car-bath-salts-blame/story?id=15777655#.T8bA5UWXSig

http://www.startribune.com/local/130023373.html

 

This guy became a zombie for Jesus.
[video=youtube;jJMHPstfl1o]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJMHPstfl1o[/video]

 

Yeah here's the other guy who ate his moms' brains ...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ueRFmmIyfw

 

Is that absolutely (*)(*)(*)(*)ing necessary? Seriously. It is offensive to people who don't even have a dog in this fight. There are really good people who are Christians who went out into drought stricken Niger, or in to military conflict in Africa to deliver food and don't pick on homosexuals or blacks. World Vision feeds more kids than any secular fund of its type. Do those people deserve zombie Jesus comments?

(*)(*)(*)(*) all...

 

Technically Jesus was a zombie to.
"Partake of my flesh. Now let me partake of your brains": -Revelations 3: don't give a (*)(*)(*)(*)

 

I can certainly see that you don't. The fact that you have zero empathy for people who do not think like you says a great deal. Strange that this is your quarrel with others.

 

If you hadn't noticed already, this whole forum is just one big quarrel between people who don't think the same way as each other.
I, and most others, don't come here to be civil.

This a thread about cannibals for (*)(*)(*)(*)s sake.

 

Maybe he's snorting bubble bath?

Srsly, I've never heard of the bath salts thing. How weird is that?

 

It could be a dialog. Why does it have to be a quarrel?

 

Every thread becomes a quarrel, often times just because of the mere presence of certain posters. Take the OP for instance.
Every thread he makes becomes a hate filled slug fest because he finds some random crime committed by a black person, posts it here, and then adds some snide remark about democrats/liberals and a few thinly veiled references to a race war or how black people are terrible.
If this cannibal had been white I guarantee the OP would never have made this thread.
In essence, this thread was a quarrel before it was even made.

 

This is true ... there's already been 4 white cannibals posted to one black cannibal ... the white cannibals are much more heinous ... and there's not a usual conservative in sight to make objections ...

Looks like the OP got pwn'd again ...

 

Yes, but what about me? I'm not posting white cannibals or black cannibals. I'm just trying to say that they might not be real German cannibals, they might in fact just be dudes high on drugs. This is a story all over the country because its just weird. In this case...you do wonder what kind of (*)(*)(*)(*) he was taking that made him flip the (*)(*)(*)(*) out. So I commented and got zombie Jesus'd.

 

How can you say one type of cannibals is more heinous than the next? If someone is gnawing upon you it is all bad.

 

Looks like the OP has disappeared leaving it to his buddies ... right now, they're trying to find an angle out of this one ... believe me, it'll be a doozy ...

 

Okay.

He was likely on PCP. A very powerful and dangerous hallucinogenic drug that basically turns you into a rabid animal for a period of time. This rapper was on it and he killed his friends girlfriend then ate her lungs. Police found him naked in the street covered in blood howling at the moon but were able to retrain him.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Lurch

 

I've found that only shooting the black zombies in video games doesn't make the game any easier. It's always best to just shoot all of them dead and let the NAACP and ACLU sort out the rest.

 

I mostly want to make the point that its not shrooms, peyote, and other natural hallucinogens.

 

I feel like eating cardboard now that I've read this.

 

Now, be fair. I was pretty hard on white OWS rapists.

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Sup? What do you want to discuss? Bath salts? PCP?

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