Face-Eater's Girlfriend Blames Drugs—or Voodoo Curse

Rudy Eugene's girlfriend says that on the morning of the day he was shot dead as he chewed a homeless man's face off, he held his Bible and kissed her goodbye, saying he was going to meet with a "homeboy." He called her an hour after he left, at around 6:30am, telling her his car had broken down—and that was the last she heard from him, she tells the Miami Herald. Eugene, the 31-year-son of Haitian immigrants, was shot by police around 2pm that day and his girlfriend believes he was either drugged unknowingly—or the victim of a voodoo curse.

The girlfriend, who is not of Haitian descent, says she has never believed in voodoo until now. "I don’t know how else to explain this," she says, describing Eugene as a sweet and mild-mannered man who often smoked marijuana but wouldn't touch stronger drugs and even refused to take headache medication. Police records show that Eugene was Tasered in 2004 after threatening to kill his mother during a domestic dispute. She says that they had a good relationship despite the incident. "Everybody says that he was a zombie, but I know he’s not a zombie; he’s my son," she says. "I don’t know what they injected in him to turn him into the person who did what he did." (More Ronald Poppo stories.)