A man whose face was eaten by a naked attacker in Miami is fighting for
his life as authorities try to piece together just what sparked the
horrific incident.
The identity of the two men remains unclear, although some reports
suggest they may have been homeless men living beneath the MacArthur
Causeway, which connects downtown Miami to South Beach.
The gruesome attack went down in broad daylight Saturday afternoon,
authorities said. The two men are visible in surveillance video captured
from a nearby building, but it is unclear if the entire horror show was
recorded.
The pair of men appeared to be fighting, said Larry Vega, a Miami
resident who first witnessed the nightmarish scene on an off-ramp by
Biscayne Boulevard, which is near the offices of The Miami Herald
newspaper.
“When I looked forward, there's a guy on top of another person, eating him up like, just tearing, tearing his face apart,” he
told Local 10 News.
“It’s going to take some time to forget. I never thought I would see
someone else eating someone. It was really, really horrific.”
He alerted a police officer “that a homeless man was killing another person by biting and ripping his face to death.”
Vega said the cop ordered the man to stop, but he did not listen. He
then drew his gun, but “the guy just stood... with pieces of flesh in
his mouth and he growled,” he
told WSVN 13 News.
The officer, who was not identified by police, then shot the Hannibal Lector wanna-be several times.
“Based on the information provided, our Miami police officer is a hero
and saved a life,” Javier Ortiz, spokesman for Miami police’s Fraternal
Order of Police
told the Miami Herald.
The victim, who lost about 75% of his face, was rushed to Jackson
Memorial Hospital, according to WSVN 13 News. He remains in crticial
condition.
“What’s happening is whenever we see that a person has taken all of his
clothes off and has become violent, it’s indicative of this excited
delirium that’s caused by [an] overdose of drugs,” Armando Aguilar of
the Miami Fraternal Order of Police told WSVN 13 News. “What’s happening
is inside their body their organs are burning up alive.
”
