Miami 'Zombie' Attack May Have Involved Substance That Is Illegal in Georgia

Last year, Georgia lawmakers passed legislation classifying "bath salts" as a controlled substance.

The substance is now being blamed for a brutal attack that left a Miami man in critical condition and his attacker dead.

Bath salts . The substance is snorted, smoked or injected resulting in a high similar to that caused by speed. Side effects include extreme paranoia, suicidal tendencies, hallucinations or death. 

Those side effects are believed to have prompted 31-year-old Rudy Eugene to viciously attack another man, CNN reports.

Officers spotted a naked Eugene chewing on the face of another naked man. Eugene ignored police instructions to stop and was shot and killed.

"When the officer approached him, told him to stop, pointed a gun at him, he turned around and growled like a wild animal and kept eating at the man's face," Fraternal Order of Police President Armando Aguilar told CNN affiliate WPLG.

In an interview with CBS Miami, Dr. Paul Adams of Jackson Memorial Hospital said people under the influence of bath salts can become very aggressive.

“It’s dangerous for the police,” Adams said. “It’s dangerous for the firefighters. It’s dangers for the hospital workers taking care of them because they come in, they have to be restrained both chemically and physically and you’re asking for someone to get hurt.”

The victim in the case, a 65-year-old homeless man, remains hospitalized with 75 percent of his face gone, according to The Daily Beast.

Several states have taken steps to ban bath salts. USA Today reports that banning bath salts is challenging due to the complications of crafting legislation that covers all combinations of chemicals that can be used to create the substance.

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