A distraught college student, Austin Kelly Harrouff, attacked a couple in their Florida home, stabbing them to death and biting the face of the male victim, authorities said.
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The sheriff said Harrouff had joined his family for dinner at a restaurant a short distance away when he stormed off, apparently agitated about slow service.
His parents were so anxious about his behavior that evening, they called police and some of his friends to try to find him. When deputies arrived, they reportedly found Harrouff on top of her father, biting off pieces of his face.
A statement from sheriff’s spokeswoman Trisha Kukuvka Friday says Austin Harrouff will be charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of 59-year-old John Stevens and his 53-year-old wife, Michelle Mishcon. A neighbor tried to intervene, but suffered several stab wounds before fleeing to call police.
Hundreds of people attended a funeral set for Michelle Mishcon and John Stevens at the Parker Playhouse, Friday afternoon, to pay their respects.
On Tuesday, Snyder had told reporters that Harrouff’s condition was “life-threatening”.
The 19-year-old Harrouff was hospitalized following the attack, and authorities were not immediately sure if he would survive. Those results typically take one to three weeks, Snyder said, but he asked to expedite them.
“He was just so excited”, Stevens says, adding there was going to be a baptism. “I don’t need drugs”, he said in the video. Stevens appears to have tried to fight back.
Police believe Harrouff may have been under the influence of the synthetic drug flakka. “We know the who, the what, the when, the where and the how”, Snyder said.
“It is not super important to me what his mindset was”, John Stevens IV told the SunSentinel on Thursday.
Snyder said that at 9:20 p.m. on Monday, 911 dispatchers received a call from a neighbor who said he was stabbed while trying to stop an assault at a home across the street from him.
“I think he had a knife”, Jeff Fisher told a 911 operator in a tape of the call released Tuesday.
Austin Harrouff is now listed in stable condition at St. Mary’s Medical Center in West Palm Beach, according to Martin County deputies. “It’s awful”, Stevens says he is grateful for his father’s friends who have come forward and offered to help with the children but “there is no real replacement for a grandfather”.
“The Harrouff family expresses their deepest sympathy for the pain and suffering caused by Austin Harrouff”, the statement released Friday said.
Three deputies and a canine subdued Harrouff as he grunted, made animal-like noises and chewed the face of John Stevens, Snyder said.
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We love our son and know that he is not the person some are making him to be for their own purposes. Snyder also said that Harrouff had taken off some of his clothes, but did not have an elevated body temperature, which can happen after taking Flakka or bath salts. “I mean all he’s talking about is how he doesn’t do steroids, do steroids but there’s kind of a loopy dreamy approach to his narrative”, said Miller. He had just left a restaurant where he had an argument with his father.
