Authorities in Florida say they arrived on a suspected murder scene to find a 19-year-old college student eating and gnawing on a dead man’s face.
Police report that after multiple attempts to apprehend the suspect with stun guns and police dogs, the young man would not budge. It took three deputies to pull Austin Harrouff off of the deceased victim, Martin County Sheriff William Snyder said according to NY Daily News.
The partially eaten man and his wife were both pronounced dead at the scene. The neighbor who attempted to stop the stabbing rampage and who contacted law enforcement was sent to the hospital due to his severe injuries, but is expected to survive.
When the police approached Harrouff, Snyder said they could hear the student making “animal-like noises” similar to snarling and grunting.
Snyder asserts that, although drug test results have not come back yet, they believe the repulsive and tragic crime may have been catalyzed by the 19-year-old taking synthetic drugs.
“We know in our business that people on flakka or bath salts will do this type of behavior where they attack their victim and do the biting and remove pieces of flesh in the biting,” Snyder explained in a news conference, according to the NY Daily News.
A similar incident occurred in Florida in May of 2012, in which Miami police officers shot and killed a naked man who was chewing on another naked man’s face.
Snyder told the Miami Herald that Harrouff is a sophomore at Florida State University and was back in his home town of Tequesta, Florida eating dinner at a sports pub with his parents when he allegedly stormed out of dinner for unclear reasons.
Harrouff is now sedated in a hospital in Palm Beach County under police supervision, according to the Miami Herald.
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