When authorities arrived at the home of the victims, they found the alleged assailant, 19-year-old Florida State University student Austin Harrouff, biting off parts of the male victim’s face, WPTV reported Tuesday.
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He viciously stabbed a married couple twice his age, plus a neighbor who tried to intervene, deputies said.
Florida State University student Austin Harrouff may have been on hallucinogenic drugs when he attacked Michelle Mishcon, 53, and John Stevens, 59, at their Tequesta home late on Monday, Martin County Sheriff William Snyder told reporters. “It bit the suspect”, said Snyder. Snyder said they didn’t shoot, fearing their bullets would strike the victim.
“The suspect in this case apparently was abnormally strong”.
She said “it would be typical” for neighbor Jeff Fisher to try to rescue them.
CBS Tampa affiliate WPEC reports that when the first deputy arrived, the sheriff said she had found a man on top of another one in a driveway, biting his face.
It took several deputies, a K9 and the use of a stun gun to subdue him.
And the brutal attack was random, Snyder said.
The Martin County Sheriff’s Office says that John Joseph Stevens III and Michelle Karen Mischon were the victims killed by Harrouff.
The neighbour who was stabbed after initially responding to the incident was taken to local hospital and underwent surgery.
Suskauer said Tuesday night there are still many unknowns in the case, and some information we may never know without talking to Harrouff directly.
Snyder said an initial test didn’t find traces of amphetamine and other substances, but that they took a sampling of blood to check for flakka or bath salts. “It’s ‘I don’t know'”.
The man suspected of killing two people in Martin County on Monday night remains hospitalized and is now listed in stable condition.
Doug Meadows first identified his sister and his brother-in-law as the deceased victims in an interview with The Palm Beach Post early Tuesday. Inside the home they found his wife, also stabbed to death.
Stevens’ brother-in-law, Doug Maddox, said the couple often kept their garage door up and a seat open for friends and family.
“It’s just beyond me why that would happen”, Maddox said.
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The case immediately prompted comparisons with the “Miami face-eater” case of May 2012, when police fatally shot a naked man who they said had been trying to chew off another man’s face. Yet the suspect in that case, 31-year-old Rudy Eugene, had only marijuana in his system, and his victim didn’t die.
