Sheriff: Man on flaaka and LDS smashes window. attack two

STUART, Fla. (AP) - A 19-year-old man who smashed through the front window of a Florida home and attacked a woman and her adult son said he was on the powerful street drug flakka, a sheriff said Monday.

Martin County Sheriff William Snyder told a news conference Niko Gallo told the woman that before breaking into the house he had taken flakka and LSD. Snyder said the case appears similar to one two weeks ago where Austin Harrouff, also 19, randomly beat and stabbed a couple to death at their home and then bit the dead man's face.

While Harrouff told deputies he was not on drugs, both he and Gallo demonstrated incredible strength and a high tolerance to pain, Snyder said. Harrouff's blood is still being tested and Gallo's will be. Neither Gallo nor Harrouff had a criminal record before the attacks.

"It is just inexplicable," Snyder said. "I have no words to describe it."

Flakka gained notoriety nationally last year, as several people in South Florida went on crazed rampages under its influence. It had virtually disappeared since the Chinese government cracked down on its manufacture last year.

The latest attack happened early Sunday morning. Snyder said the woman heard someone trying to open her front door and heard him saying, "Sorry, I'm going to die." A short time later, Gallo used his hand to break the plate-glass window in the front of her home, then did a "cannonball" through it and grabbed her by the shoulder. She broke away and screamed for her son, 34.

The son, who weighed 100 pounds more than Gallo, fought him from all through the house. Meanwhile, his mother hit Gallo on the head several times with a metal baseball bat.