The naked black man who tried to eat another man’s face before he was shot dead by police has been identified

Police sources have confirmed that the black attacker was 31-year-old Rudy Eugene. The man he attacked remains in extremely critical condition at Jackson Memorial Hospital. Much of his face was gone, the skin ripped away, the nose bitten and the eyes gouged. What remained was his goatee and little else. “We’re hoping that he pulls through, for his well-being, but also so he can tell us what happened,” said Sgt. Javier Ortiz, vice president of the Miami police union. “Only he knows.” One witness said that he was riding his bicycle when he saw a black man tearing off pieces of the victim’s flesh with his mouth. After an officer approached, Larry Vega said, “The guy just stood, his head up like that, with pieces of flesh in his mouth. And he growled.” Eugene left behind few clues as to what could have prompted the attack. According to court records, he married Jenny Ductant on Dec. 15, 2005, in Hollywood. The marriage ended in divorce after a little more than two years. “I wouldn’t say he had mental problem but he always felt like people was against him . .. No one was for him, everyone was against him,” his ex-wife said. He had one arrest for serious violence. Miami Beach police arrested him on a battery charge when he was 16, according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. The charge was later dropped. He was arrested seven other times over five years. Court records show that one was for misdemeanor battery, one was for vending near a school, one was for trespassing and four involved marijuana. The last case came in September 2009. Later, the charge was dropped. During the cannibalistic attack, an officer approached and told Eugene to get off his victim, but Eugene ignored the order and kept chewing, even after the officer shot him once. The officer fired again, hitting him several more times, eventually killing him. Security video from the adjacent Miami Herald building captured snippets of the violence as the two men — one dead, the other gravely injured and wearing only a shirt — lay on the sidewalk as officers arrived. The ghoulish event even spawned a Twitter account, dubbed The Miami Zombie. An emergency room doctor at Jackson Memorial Hospital said that Eugene’s attack could have been induced by bath salts, a drug nicknamed after the bathroom product it resembles. Police theorized earlier that it was “cocaine psychosis,” a drug-induced craze that bakes the body internally and often leads those it affects to strip naked to try to cool off.