Second teen in violent Florida 'bath salts' attack says he was seized by 'uncontrollable urge'

A second teenager who admitted taking dangerous bath salt "zombie" drugs said he was seized by an "uncontrollable" urge to break into a home and attack strangers near Florida's recent cannibal killings, officials said

Nico Gallo, 19, told investigators the effect from the drugs "got pretty intense", said Martin County Sheriff Bill Snyder. "He had what he described as an uncontrollable urge to go into the house."

He "remembers parts of what occurred that night, powerful hallucinations," Snyder told WPTV. "He remembers a force that he says he could not stop. He said it felt like there was something outside of him, propelling him."

Gallo "cannonballed" through the glass window of a stranger's house while high on the drugs and attacked the sleeping residents inside with "superhuman strength", said Snyder.

The attack occurred in the same county and just days after the "cannibal killings" in Tequesta, Florida, on 15 August when police said college sophomore Austin Harrouff beat and stabbed to death a married couple he didn't know, then chewed the face and abdomen of the dead man.

Officials suspect that Harrouff, too, was under the effects of bath salts or flakka, drugs which can cause bizarre, extremely violent behaviour and even cannibalism. They are awaiting the results of tests for the drug.

Police are also waiting to talk to Harrouff, who has been extremely ill with organ failure in a Palm Beach County hospital.

It's not entirely clear what drugs Gallo ingested. He told police he and a friend mixed LSD and the bath salt methylone. But Snyder said police also found in his home dibutylone, a psychedelic drug in the cathinone family of drugs related to bath salts, the Palm Beach Post reported.

Gallo was booked into the Martin County jail on charges of burglary and assault. He had initially been taken to a local hospital with some of the same medical symptoms as Harrouff, though he wasn't nearly so ill.

Gallo told reporters he was "dearly sorry" for what he had done.

"I regret ever taking the drugs that I was on. I regret breaking into that house, and I regret hurting those people," Gallo said in an interview.