In Miami, a man ate the face of homeless man and was shot and killed by police when they could not subdue him. A college student in Maryland killed and ate the heart and brains of his roommate. A low-budget porn star in Canada reportedly tortured and killed another man, then ate his heart and brain. There is a new drug on the scene, a type of stimulant known as “bath salts,” and it is feared to be linked to some of these recent acts of cannibalism.
According to the website loop21.com there have been two more recent zombie like attacks. One in New Haven, CT, where a beauty supply store owner was kicked, punched and even bitten by a woman trying to shop lift a wig from the store. The suspect is a woman named Lowpel Davis. Surveillance of the incident shows the store owner, 70 year old Jongyol Lee, chasing the suspect down the street as she continued to attack him. The other incident occurred in Louisiana, where a man bit of a quarter sized amounts of the victims left cheek. The victim, Todd Credeur, was attacked by, 42 year old, Carl Jacquneaux, outside of Credeur’s home. When the police found Credeur he was covered in.
Although the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in October of last year placed some of the chemicals used to make the drug under its control, according to an article at WebMD, people are still finding ways to sell it legally. Dr. Zane Horowitz, medical director at the Oregon Poison Center, says producers of the drug have found ways around the laws making the drug’s production illegal.
The drug is being labeled as bath salts, like those used in a tub, marked “not for human consumption,” and is then sold in mini-marts and bath shops under various street names, such as “ivory wave.”
No cases have yet been seen in New York’s five boroughs, but Horowitz states that the drug has been declared an “imminent threat to public safety” by the DEA. Side effects of the drug are “agitation, paranoia, hallucinations, chest pain and suicidality,” according to Horowitz.
The drug has many asking, are we under a zombie attack? Will people turn into “Zombieland” or “I Am Legend”-style walking dead? According to the Huffington Post, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) tried to put the country at ease by releasing the follow statement: “[The] CDC does not know of a virus or condition that would reanimate the dead (or one that would present zombie-like symptoms).”
According a report in this morning’s AM New York newspaper, the Miami man who was shot six times by officers while eating a homeless man’s face was not on “bath salts”. The Miami-Dade medical examiner announced yesterday the only thing found in his system was marijuana. At the time of this incident it was widely believed that the attacker was under the influence of “bath salts” when it happened.
The AM New York report also states that this revelation comes on the heels of a recently approved Senate bill, which is co-sponsored by New York senator Chuck Scheumer, which was signed on Tuesday. The bill was is expected to be signed by President Obama, will ban the “psychosis-inducing designer drug,” known on the street as “bath salts.”