Zombie Apocalypse Survivor Ronald Poppo Speaks Up, Continuing Bath Salts Saga

Though for many the ‘Zombie Apocalypse’ may be a passing news trend, for Ronald Poppo will be an everlasting tragedy.

Poppo, the Miami ‘Zombie Apocalypse’ face-chewing attack victim, has spoken publicly for the first time since the gruesome attack that stunned the nation last Memorial Day from Florida. 

"He attacked me," Poppo said of ‘Miami Cannibal’ Rudy Eugene. "He just ripped me to ribbons. He chewed up my face. He plucked out my eyes. Basically that's all there is to say about it."

"For a very short amount of time I thought he was a good guy," Poppo said. "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."

And though it has been almost three months since the attack that left Poppo, a Miami homeless man, hospitalized with 75% of his face missing, many questions still remain.

Eugene, who was shot and killed by police, had met Poppo prior to the gruesome attack while volunteering with at a Miami homeless community center -- a detail recently known.  

That is why Eugene's reaction seems even more puzzling. Though initially it was assumed Eugene was high on the deadly drug known as "bath salts," toxicology reports didn't find the drug in Eugene's system. Apparently, he was not on "bath salts" or any other synthetic drug when he chewed off 75% of Poppo's face. However, authorities are skeptical.

Broward Sheriff Al Lamberti thinks the so-called "Causeway Cannibal" was on something not caught by either of the two labs that ran the toxicology tests. "We are not testing for everything that may be out there," said Dr. Barry Logan, one of the nation's leading toxicologists.

As it turns out, drug makers are using more than 100 chemical compounds to make synthetic drugs, but even the most sophisticated lab can only test for 17 of them. And bath salts are hard to track for the same reason. There are hundreds of bath salt compounds, but toxicologists can only test for 40. "This is always a moving target," Logan said. 

If this is true, Ronald Poppo's account would be just the tip of the iceberg in a potentially horrid resurgence of the bath salts epidemic that stunned the nation; and that, far from finished, may be an ongoing tragedy with the worst part yet to come.