" ...flesh in his stomach that wasn't his own."
May 27, 2012 4:05 PM   Subscribe

On May 26th, a naked man eating the face off of his victim was fatally shot by police. Horrifyingly, public zombie/cannibal attacks are not without recent precedent.

Though official reports say the attack was a result of cocaine psychosis, i09 suspects this is how the Zombie Apocalypse begins.
Also, a Chinese man was recently arrested and suspected of butchering 11 men and selling the flesh as "Ostrich Meat."

Previously, (this is a good one) Previously,Prehistorically
posted by kittensofthenight (46 comments total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: This was an impressive attempt, but really no depth of framing is going to make this work here. -- restless_nomad



 
Needs more (fava) beans.
posted by chavenet at 4:07 PM on May 27, 2012 [2 favorites]


I appreciate that the first two links there are to the Daily Mail.
posted by pbump at 4:08 PM on May 27, 2012 [1 favorite]


Sometimes I read stories and think "there but for the grace of god go I.".

This is not one of those stories.
posted by vitabellosi at 4:09 PM on May 27, 2012 [5 favorites]


Disturbing. But at least the attacker stayed down after being shot.



Or is that only what they want us to think?
posted by audi alteram partem at 4:13 PM on May 27, 2012 [2 favorites]


Ach! Hans, run! Its the Wendigo!
posted by Slackermagee at 4:13 PM on May 27, 2012 [2 favorites]


Disturbing. But at least the attacker stayed down after being shot.

Or is that only what they want us to think?


In the Guardian's write-up of this, it says this

"During this confrontation an officer did discharge his weapon striking one of the individuals that individual has lost his life right now," said Detective Willie Moreno, spokesperson for Miami police.

which suggests that maybe he thinks he's not going to stay dead.
posted by dng at 4:16 PM on May 27, 2012 [10 favorites]


pbump- Well, 2nd and 3rd link, but in my defense the rest of the links are pretty thin too and work best in aggregate! Although the "precedent" link has a great/tragic photo and the second daily mail link is remarkably thorough.
posted by kittensofthenight at 4:22 PM on May 27, 2012


Remember, zombie Jesus loves you.
posted by Huck500 at 4:24 PM on May 27, 2012 [1 favorite]


I don't find this very funny.
posted by orange swan at 4:27 PM on May 27, 2012 [33 favorites]


Is this meant as a response to the 'what and how to eat naked' article?
posted by kaibutsu at 4:32 PM on May 27, 2012 [1 favorite]


Disturbing. But at least the attacker stayed down after being shot.

The report I read said that witnesses heard at least half-a-dozen shots AFTER THE FIRST FAILED TO STOP THE ATTACKER...

You do the math, me - I'm finding my local brutalist bunker to start planning some hunkering down therein...
posted by jkaczor at 4:35 PM on May 27, 2012


What the fuck, people. HA HA ZOMBIES LOL. Somebody wrap this story in bacon and you've got yourself a bone fide internet meme!
posted by basicchannel at 4:36 PM on May 27, 2012 [4 favorites]


Previously?
posted by Brak at 4:38 PM on May 27, 2012


This is probably the same basic phenomenon as when attackers throw acid in someone's face, trying to disfigure them. Spelunking through Google News archives in the past I've been surprised to find how common it was even a hundred years ago.
posted by XMLicious at 4:39 PM on May 27, 2012


PCP is a helluva drug.
posted by zardoz at 4:40 PM on May 27, 2012 [2 favorites]


zardos--that is exactly what I said to my husband when he read the article to me.
posted by crush-onastick at 4:42 PM on May 27, 2012


I don't find this very funny.

Maybe you had to be there.
posted by various at 4:43 PM on May 27, 2012 [7 favorites]


I don't know which story is funnier: the one about the homeless man who has been seriously disfigured and is now struggling to live or the one about the elderly Chinese man who, in an advance state of dementia, killed his wife.

Ha! Zombies!
posted by mr_roboto at 4:43 PM on May 27, 2012 [9 favorites]


Why does the cocaine psychosis link go to something that has nothing to do with cocaine psychosis?
posted by elizardbits at 4:44 PM on May 27, 2012


Why does the cocaine psychosis link go to something that has nothing to do with cocaine psychosis?

Hello? Cocaine psychosis?
posted by Trurl at 4:49 PM on May 27, 2012 [2 favorites]


Anyone else remember when Reagan de-funded mental health claiming the free market would pick up the slack?
posted by triggerfinger at 4:49 PM on May 27, 2012 [3 favorites]


I like how, if you head back to the main page on the Blue, you find this post two entries down from this one:

One year after the apocalypse. What happened to Harold Camping’s followers.

And, just below that one:

WHAT (AND HOW) TO EAT NAKED: Geoff Nicholson explains what to do if you should suddenly find yourself naked and insatiable…for food (what else?).
posted by WalterMitty at 4:49 PM on May 27, 2012 [1 favorite]


This is exactly how the Zombie Survival Guide said it would start.

And my husband thought I was crazy for wanting to live in a abandoned missile silo. Jokes on him.
posted by Sweetmag at 4:51 PM on May 27, 2012 [2 favorites]


I'm noticing an uptick in cannibalism-related posts on Metafilter. I don't think I approve.
posted by yasaman at 4:51 PM on May 27, 2012 [2 favorites]


I like how all the earnest cannibalism defenders from the other thread are absent from this one, though.
posted by elizardbits at 4:56 PM on May 27, 2012 [4 favorites]


There's a difference between cannibalism and face cannibalism.
posted by DU at 4:57 PM on May 27, 2012 [2 favorites]


Yes, he must have read the story from the FFP, WalterMitty mentioned, Gourmet Live: The Sex Issue, got ideas, and then got hungry.
posted by snaparapans at 4:59 PM on May 27, 2012


I think I just put cocaine/pcp in the same box in my head, elizardbits. The Miami man was high on cocaine, Big Lurch was high on PCP.

I saw the io9 link in the 'how to eat naked thread' and wanted more info. Google threw back a whole bunch of recent murders-with-eating, I was just stunned at how many there were, how different the details. I suppose curiosity, amazement, horror, sympathy, sadness (esp mr_roboto's examples) and, yes, zombeeLOLZ all crossed my mind. The main link had been previously deleted w/o context, and I was looking at all these similar yet different examples. I think one can contain horror, beanplating and memes w/o diminishing one's humanity. The second daily mail link is particularly horrifying to me. I work with undiagnosed, untreated mentally ill people everyday (healthcare for homeless adults is HARD to get) and I can see how burnout, lack off communication and lack of training , and plain shitty social workers can let that happen easily. It's a warning, it's terrifying. Then you get to "I fried it with some butter, it was good," and it's fucking funny. So that's why I made the post.
posted by kittensofthenight at 5:04 PM on May 27, 2012 [3 favorites]


And...not to derail, but when I read this it reminded me of the Greyhound bus incident from a few years ago where a man beheaded another man and started to eat him. I was wondering what had ever happened in that case and after googling around, found that the murderer, now being treated for schizophrenia, recently granted his first interview since it happened.

(Mods, please feel free to delete this if it's a derail)
posted by triggerfinger at 5:06 PM on May 27, 2012 [3 favorites]


I like how all the earnest cannibalism defenders from the other thread are absent from this one, though.
posted by elizardbits


Sort of like how people that think homosexual sex is OK fail to defend it when rape is involved. It's almost like they think consent factors in.
posted by Bort at 5:13 PM on May 27, 2012 [3 favorites]


I was actually expressing genuine relief that there were no defenders in this thread, dude, for precisely the reasons you outlined. But thanks for automatically assuming the worst!
posted by elizardbits at 5:16 PM on May 27, 2012 [2 favorites]


I read the title as, "On May 26th, a naked man eating the face off of his victim was TOTALLY shot by police."
and I will admit, I kinda chuckled.
posted by newfers at 5:19 PM on May 27, 2012


I'm noticing an uptick in cannibalism-related posts on Metafilter. I don't think I approve.

I find your disapproval....delicious.
posted by stifford at 5:23 PM on May 27, 2012 [3 favorites]




I was actually expressing genuine relief that there were no defenders in this thread, dude, for precisely the reasons you outlined. But thanks for automatically assuming the worst!

Fair enough, I apologize.
posted by Bort at 5:29 PM on May 27, 2012


There's a difference between cannibalism and face cannibalism.

Sometimes you're in the mood for intimacy and other times you're not.
posted by Trurl at 5:31 PM on May 27, 2012


I wanted to make a joke about braising, but this is a pretty terrible story. Also, without passing judgement on the police officer in any way, it would have been better if the assailant could have been stopped and apprehended with non-lethal means.
posted by snofoam at 5:35 PM on May 27, 2012


If I go into a cryogenic sleep for fifty some-odd years will people on the Internet finally shut the fucking fuck up about fucking zombies? Because for fuck's sake, people, enough.
posted by Legomancer at 5:37 PM on May 27, 2012 [10 favorites]


HERP DERP ZOMBIES HAHAHA LOL

I only was able to read the Miami Herald's story. It was really depressing. I kept thinking about the poor guy who was attacked, what his life will be like from now on.

:(
posted by suburbanbeatnik at 5:43 PM on May 27, 2012 [1 favorite]



I like how all the earnest cannibalism defenders from the other thread are absent from this one, though.

Do you really want to bring the Catholics into the discussion ?
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 5:45 PM on May 27, 2012


...it would have been better if the assailant could have been stopped and apprehended with non-lethal means.

The assailant was eating someone's face. I doubt the cop would've had much success getting the cannibal to put down the face and consider enrolling in an anger management program.
posted by horsewithnoname at 5:49 PM on May 27, 2012 [5 favorites]


I started to post this at 9 a.m. then thought to myself, "No, this is not how I want to start my morning. Leave it to someone else." Then I went out into the yard and gardened.
posted by Felicity Rilke at 5:51 PM on May 27, 2012 [3 favorites]


I'm pretty sure America's founders didn't foresee zombie attacks when they wrote the 2nd Amendment... which suggests one of the stronger arguments against originalism that I'm aware of.
posted by BobbyVan at 5:54 PM on May 27, 2012


If I was having my face eaten, I think I would have been ok with the police officer not taking extra time to consider if there was a more humane way to make this person stop eating my face.
posted by stifford at 5:56 PM on May 27, 2012 [8 favorites]


MetaTalk
posted by orange swan at 6:08 PM on May 27, 2012 [1 favorite]


I often feel that police shootings are unnecessary, and I think we need a new police culture that is much more critical of lethal force... but if a suspect is eating someone's face like a goddamned movie monster, I feel like it might be justified. For the record, I find this story more disturbing than funny, but I'm not offended by all the "Aggh! Zombies!"--I think it's often coming from a place of being genuinely unsettled by this story.

This kind of makes me wonder if we're going to end up with "zombie sickness" as a cultural phenomenon. Wendigo sickness is a real thing--by which I mean, it's a cultural channel for mental illness to express itself. Or for another example, a delusional Christian might think they're Jesus, a delusional Hindu that they're Shiva, but it's the same kind of delusion. It seems possible that someone who's severely disturbed might express as a zombie.
posted by Nibbly Fang at 6:18 PM on May 27, 2012 [1 favorite]


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