Witness Calls of Miami Cannibal Attack Revealed by Police
Witnesses who saw the "Miami Cannibal" Rudy Eugene beating and tearing off homeless man Ronald Poppo's face called police, reporting that they feared that he will be killed. The calls made by eyewitnesses during the attack have been revealed by officials. The callers, however, seemed unaware how vicious the attack was, and that the poor man was having his face eaten off.
A female bus driver called 911 saying: "He's going to kill that man, I promise you". She described the scene she saw as she drove by the two men. "Listen, there is a naked man on the MacArthur Causeway. He is beating another man to a pulp - like on top of the man, beating him, the man is bleeding."
A male witnessed called saying that two men were fighting and that they nearly knocked over a cyclist during the scuffle. "These two bums were going at it with each other, taking up the whole lane. I think they were fighting or something."
Another man called to report that he saw a man taking off his clothes and tossing them into traffic. "You can't miss him. He's naked."
Rudy Eugene, 31, attacked, Ronald Poppo, 65, at 2 p.m. on a Miami causeway. Poppo was sleeping under the highway when a naked Eugene attacked Poppo, beat him and stripped his clothes from the waist down, before straddling him and eating his face.
The victim's long lost daughter had been contacted about the attack. She revealed how shocked she was that her father had been alive and had been attacked this way. 44-year-old Janice Poppo DiBello and her mother were abandoned by Ronald Poppo when she was only two years old.
DiBello, from New Jersey, told New York Daily News: "I'm really upset because I haven't met my father. Since I was two-years-old, him and my mom got divorced and there was no .. like how normal divorces are, where you see your father. Nobody ever heard anything from him, so I've never met him. I didn't know if he was alive or dead."
DiBello's mother said she divorced Poppo in 1970 and hadn't heard from him since.
Janice said: "It was a complete shock, because like I said, I've never had a relationship with my biological father. I have never heard from him. I have no idea what happened to him... "I'm still in shock about everything."
Decades ago, Poppo had been a star student at elite Stuyvesant High School in Lower Manhattan.
Cannibal Rudy Eugene's family are also in shock that the Bible-reading Christian man they knew had committed this grisly crime.
