Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Designer drug fueled rampage, sheriff says
A designer drug thought to have fueled a bizarre and violent home invasion was acquired in Margate, Martin County Sheriff William Snyder said Monday.
Nico Gallo, 19, is accused of smashing through the front window of a home south of Stuart about 2:44 a.m. Sunday and attacking a 55-year-old woman and her 34-year-old son.
The intruder was wearing pajamas and a T-shirt during the attack and kept saying he was on flakka and was going to die, the sheriff said. He seemed to demonstrate unusual strength and a high pain threshold, marking the second random attack by a teenager in Martin County this month, officials said.
“There was a lot of inexplicable, unprovoked violence,” Sny- der said. “Clearly, he was not thinking rationally.”
The sheriff described the intruder as “cannon-balling” through the front window.
The woman’s son fended off the attacker, while his mother struck the intruder several times in the head with an aluminum baseball bat, Snyder said.
The sheriff said the intruder’s
abnormal strength resembled that of 19-year-old Austin Harrouff, who attacked a random couple on Aug. 15, killed them and bit the man's face. Toxicology results are pending in that case.
In the latest incident, Snyder said one of Gallo’s friends told deputies Gallo was using a new designer drug called methylone that had been purchased in Margate. A subsequent test showed that a substance recovered by deputies was dibutylone, a chemical related to drugs commonly referred to as bath salts, the sheriff said.
“They are extremely unpredictable,” Snyder said. “Five people take it, and one person goes on a rampage. It’s playing Russian roulette with a sixchamber gun and five bullets in the chamber.”
The Margate Police Department and other Broward County police agencies are working several cases involving the substance mentioned by the sheriff, said Sgt. Lori Eller, a Margate Police spokeswoman.
Deputies handcuffed the intruder and bound his feet because he was kicking them. In a 911 call released Monday, the woman pleaded with deputies to arrive as quickly as possible as her son struggled with the attacker.
“I just hit him with a baseball bat . ... I just hit him two more times,” the woman told the dispatcher. “He won’t leave us alone. He’s going crazy. He’s attacking. I got no idea who he is.”
Deputies subdued the man, but officials said he was too violent to put in a medical helicopter. He was taken by ambulance to the hospital, where he remained in stable condition. The woman suffered cuts on her arm from broken glass and needed stitches, officials said
When Gallo is released from the hospital, he will be charged with burglary with assault, Snyder said.