The cannibalistic actions of several individuals in the last week of May that the media began calling the "zombie apocalypse" might have been a grisly sign of things to come. The rash of bloody, flesh-eating attacks seemed to have continued into the first week of June, despite a strange statement from the CDC that the they knew of no means by which a person could become reanimated after dying. But it isn't the undead that people have to worry about.
The latest flesh-eating incident occurred in Lafayette, La., when Carl Jacquneaux got into an altercation with Todd Creduer, the boyfriend of his ex-wife. Ignoring a restraining order against him, the 42-year-old Jacquneaux entered the back yard of the ex-wife's house, where Creduer was working.
The victim told ABC affiliate KATCthat he and Creduer began arguing over a domestic issue. The argument degenerated into violence, Creduer said, and Jacquneaux bit him in the face, taking away a quarter-sized piece of flesh. He said he was able to escape his attacker by spraying him in the face with wasp repellant.
The assailant then reportedly ran to a nearby house, where he held his one-time friend Billy Louviere at knifepoint, demanding his father's gun. According to the National Enquirer, Jacquneaux threatened to kill Louviere if he didn't provide the gun.
Jacquneaux was arrested soon afterward when police tracked him to a dead end street near the house of his ex-wife. He faces charges of aggravated burglary, simple battery, violation of probation, aggravated second degree battery and violation of protective orders.
Creduer was admitted to a nearby hospital to address his injuries.
Police have the matter under investigation but believe that illegal narcotics may have contributed to the attack. An unidentified friend of Jacquneaux's suggested he may have been under the influence of bath salts.
Bath salts, the street name for the psychoactive drug Methylenedioxypyrovalerone, is also believed to have contributed to the behavior of Rudy Eugene, the so-called "Miami Zombie." Eugene, after being seen walking the streets naked, attacked a homeless man and was shot and killed by police when he continued devouring the face of his victim.
Eugene's case was the first of several gory incidents that generated a swarm of "zombie apocalypse" headlines. At roughly the same time, a 29-year-old porn star named Luka Rocco Magnotta allegedly killed and dismembered his roommate in a Montreal apartment, videotaped his subsequent necrophilic and cannibalistic (he ate a piece of his victim's buttocks) actions and posted the footage on the Internet. Pieces of the dismembered body were mailed to Canada's two major political parties and the headless torso was found in a locked suitcase behind the apartment the two men shared. When Montreal Police discovered Magnotta had fled to Paris, an international manhunt ensued, ending with the fugitive's capture at a German cafe.
The same day that the manhunt for Magnotta went international (May 31), Alexander Kinyua was arrested outside Baltimore, Md., after admitting to killing, dismembering, and eating the heart and part of the brain of his housemate.
Like the Jacquneaux and Eugene incidents, it is as yet unclear if drugs were involved in the Magnotta or Kinyua cases.