Images of a man gnawing on a severed human leg on the side of a busy street in broad daylight shocked the nation this week, sparking speculation that the national drug crisis is to blame.
Video taken in Wasco, California, shows Rosendo Tellez, 27, lifting his leg, apparently biting it and then waving it on the sidewalk before police arrived.
Not all details of the arrest have been made available, but the Internet is abuzz with theories about the possible involvement of drugs that currently dominate the illicit drug supply, specifically xylazine and fentanyl.
Forensic toxicologist Dr Bruce Goldberger, who worked with police on the two horrific cases in Florida involving disturbed people eating each other’s faces, told DailyMail.com he understood the instinct to suspect such drugs.
But he said methamphetamine, crack cocaine or bath salts would actually be the most likely culprits, given that stimulants can cause a powerful state of psychosis, or a complete separation from reality, than other drugs such as fentanyl, which is a sedative, they can’t. .
However, if fentanyl is combined with other drugs, it can enhance their effects.
Horrified onlookers watched as the man leaned over and sniffed the leg before allegedly biting it and then waving it on the streets of Wasco, California.
Rosendo Téllez was seen walking down the street, waving his amputated leg and carrying it by the foot.
According to Dr. Goldberger, Tellez’s cannibalistic behavior is not “characterized in the medical literature.” This is so unusual, so aberrant, that it is not something that can be easily studied.
He added: “When you hear about these cases, sometimes you immediately think whether it is a drug or drugs.”
Stimulants, such as methamphetamine or crack cocaine, for example, are the most likely class of drugs, Dr. Goldberger said.
Bath salts, a type of stimulant drug that people inhale, smoke or inject, are now famous for their links to two deranged attacks in which people ate each other’s faces.
Dr Goldberger told DailyMail.com that in a psychotic state, eating another person’s flesh may be considered necessary for self-defense or survival if the person is convinced that they will otherwise starve.
In this altered mental state, the neurotransmitter dopamine, responsible for rewarding survival-enhancing behaviors such as eating, can exacerbate psychotic delusions.
Because of their effects on dopamine levels, stimulants are more likely to cause psychosis, a state in which one is detached from reality and prone to deranged or violent behavior, up to and including cannibalism, he said.
Stimulants also drastically impair the user’s judgment, making them more impulsive and uninhibited, and create a state of hyperaggression that could extend to violence.
Rosendo Tellez was arrested for removing human remains from the site of an Amtrak crash earlier that day that had struck and killed a person, as well as possession of controlled substance paraphernalia and a felony violation of probation, records show. of arrest.
The grim footage was captured by construction worker José Ibarra, who said: “In the video we have, you can clearly see that he started chewing on the leg and everything.”
Tellez was homeless at the time of his arrest and had at least half a dozen other misdemeanor charges on his record, mostly for drug and alcohol offenses.
At the same time, Dr. Goldberger said it was also likely that Tellez was not on drugs but was actually suffering from a serious and violent mental illness.
He said: ‘In the cases I know of, there have been no drugs involved. “It was an underlying behavior that led to cannibalism that has no association with a drug or drugs.”
One of those cases involved Rudy Eugene, 31, in Miami, who ripped off pieces of 65-year-old Ronald Poppo’s face. It was later discovered that Eugene, a diagnosed schizophrenic, had used marijuana, not bath salts, as was popularly assumed when the event made national headlines.
Dr. Goldberger said the marijuana in his system was “nothing significant or important” in terms of influencing his behavior.
The other was Austin Harrouff, a student at Florida State University who, at age 19, killed a couple and ate one of their faces. He was deemed incompetent to stand trial due to insanity.
Dr. Goldberger said, “The state, the FBI, did a lot of testing over the course of a few years, because drugs evolve over time. Today there could be drugs in someone’s blood that we’ve never seen before.”
He stressed that fentanyl and xylazine would not have caused the behavior shown in Ibarra’s viral video. These drugs “do not cause psychosis.”
While Mr. Téllez’s toxicology report has not yet been provided, whatever it contains could end up providing few answers.
Standard drug testing in prisons looks for standard drugs of abuse, including opioids, cocaine, ecstasy and other stimulants. But they won’t use other designer drugs that could play a role in causing psychosis, such as spice, bath salts, synthetic marijuana, or K2.