A scare of of flakka drug suddenly emerged in the media channels after Austin Harrouff, a 19-year-old teenager from Florida, reportedly murdered a married couple and then bit the face of his male victim. Florida authorities believe that the teenager was under the influence of flakka drug, a highly addictive trendy drug which can cause psychosis and paranoia.
Florida police arrested Austin Kelly Harrouff last month after stabbing to death a husband John Stevens III, 59, and wife, Michelle Stevens, 53, in their house at Jupiter, Florida. Martin County Sheriff William Snyder blamed the flakka drug for Harrouff's face-eating attack.
"When you see a case like this where someone is biting off pieces of somebody's face, could it be flakka? The answer is it absolutely could be a flakka case," Martin County Sheriff William Snyder said in a report published in the Independent. But detectives are still working to know whether or not Harrouff had the drug in his human system, the report continued.
Flakka, which includes alpha-PVP, is a chemical substance similar to the ingredients utilized to create bath salts. It looks like a combination of meth and crack cocaine. In 2013, it swept through Florida, getting the name "five dollar insanity" as it causes psychosis, "superhuman" power and hallucinations.
When ingested, flakka causes a sensation of hallucinations, euphoria and often apparent superhuman power and psychosis. Jim Hall, an epidemiologist from Nova Southeastern University described that flakka users become psychotic, often rip off their clothes and run out into the street violently with an adrenaline-like strength that when police are called, it would take four or five officers to restrain them, via the DailyMail.
Sheriff Snyder said that Harrouff was "abnormally strong" during the night of murder. "And the following day, he was intubated and sedated in the hospital after suffering dog bites, bruises and cuts," the sheriff added. For the current status of Harrouff, Treasure Coast Palm said that he's in poor state, with police believing that he might have consumed something triggering "intestinal problems."
