ZomNom 2

by Nik Magill

News Update as of 6/1:

This is a follow-up to my previous ZomNom article.

Okay, so I'm a tad less worried now that I know this guy was known as the "Miami Zombie". So it didn't go completely unnoticed or ignored.

So we've got ids for both Nommer and Nommie. Not much is said about the victim, which, I suppose isn't very crucial to the story, he was just on the wrong bridge at the wrong time. Wearing the wrong clothes, apparently.

It's our assailant that still fascinates me.
So he has a record. Some possession and selling. But I can't imagine a pot history is going to make you go all Walking Dead on anyone. And he has a battery charge too. But, to quote Shakespeare, battery does not a face-chewer make.
The girlfriend claims that he wasn't a hard drug user, that he was sweet and gentle, and he carried and read a Bible regularly. She thinks that he could have been drugged unknowingly, or that it could be voodoo. If this had happened in Louisiana or Mississippi, I'd be all over the voodoo idea. But in Miami? Then again, I don't know, maybe there is a large enough population of voodoo practitioners down in America's Wang to make it probable. I can believe it.

Also, maybe he was using without her knowledge. I don't know the guy, so I can't speak to his character, but isn't that a possibility? Maybe he goes to his job at the car wash and takes some bath salts to get through the day of disrespectful, irate customers. Hell, if I took drugs, I'd consider it at my job.

The final option, which has just come into light with the addition of religion into this story, is demon. Why not? If this guy regularly carries, and reads to his girlfriend, the Bible, then what's to say that this dude wasn't possessed? Maybe it was a trial posed by his god. Or his devil, for that matter. This kinda stuff happened all the time in biblical times. If the guy wasn't shot, maybe he would have needed an exorcism to set things right. Where the hell's John Constantine when you need him?

Now, two complaints in this unraveling story this far.

This story now tells us that the poor victim has lost "...more than 80 percent..." of his face. Get your facts straight and your percents right! I expect only 70 to 75 percent gone! How can I visualize the victim without knowing the proper percentage of missing face?!

I jest.

However, I do take offense to the sentence: "...the face-eating attacker who mauled off most of another man's face..."
Seriously? "Mauled off"?
Dictionary.com tells us this:
            maul - [mawl] - verb
                        definition 4: to injure by a rough beating, shoving, or the like; bruise: to be mauled by an angry crowd
I understand the desire to diversify your vocabulary to keep your stories fresh and unrepetetive, but don't pick just any word that sounds like it could be right. Granted, I'm a huge English nerd, so it really bothers me, but I think even the lay-person will see "mauled off" and think, wha? It doesn't flow, it doesn't make sense, and no one's ever heard it before, so it doesn't fit. The more I read the news from MSNBC, the more I appreciate NPR, and the more I know that most mainstream journalism really is lacking in integrity.

The vic is still in critical condition, but we'll see if he dies and then reanimates. We'll see if there's an autopsy on the Miami Zombie, if we learn anything that could have led to his going bananas. And I'll report on anything else that is uncovered, I'm sure, as this is one of the more interesting news stories I've seen in a while!