Doylestown Native Accused of Gnawing Woman's Head Pleads Guilty

A Doylestown-area native charged last year for stripping naked, attacking a woman and gnawing on her head in northern Pennsylvania has pleaded guilty.

Richard Cimino Jr., 21, of Buckingham Township, pleaded guilty to five charges, according to a report in the Scranton Times-Tribune.

He was arrested on Sept. 7 and charged with one count of simple assault, two counts of indecent exposure, one count of criminal mischief and one count of terroristic threats, the paper said. Other related charges have been dismissed.

Sentencing is scheduled for May 2. 

His attorney, Paul Walker, told the paper in October that Cimino was a "good kid who got screwed up that night."

The bizarre attack happened between 4:30 and 5:15 a.m. on Sept. 7 in the northern Pennsylvania borough of Hawley, home to about 1,200 people.

State police said it started when Cimino drove his car off the road behind some houses on Hudson Street, then got out of the car and stripped off his clothes, leaving on just his underwear.

He headed toward a nearby home where police said he tried to break into 634 Hudson St. After the homeowner chased him off, police said he headed up toward 521 Hudson St.

He stripped off his underwear on the way, then broke into the home. He made his way up to the second floor, jumped out the window, and severely injured his arms and legs.

Bleeding heavily, he headed back toward the street, where he encountered two women walking nearby, the police said. He tackled one of the women to the ground, covering her in his blood, then began to "gnaw at (her) head, screaming like an animal," according to the police report.

The women managed to get away and ran to call the police.

When police arrived, Cimino resisted arrest, displaying “delusional behavior” and lunging at the troopers as they approached him. He was hit with a taser, but still managed to fight back, even punching one of the ambulance personnel who had arrived to treat him, police said at the time.

Many speculated that Cimino had been under the influence of "bath salts," a catch-all term for drugs created in laboratories. Never tested on humans, and difficult to regulate, the synthetic compounds cause effects similar to cocaine, according to a study published in June by researchers at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine.

The details of the bizarre attack bear all the hallmarks of bath salt use, according to a Doylestown-based drug educator.

People using bath salts often strip off clothing, because the drug makes their body temperature, blood pressure and heart rate rise, said David Fialko, with The Council.

The drug acts somewhat like an anesthetic, so users feel no pain, Fialko said. That could explain how Cimino jumped out a second-story window, yet continued his rampage while severely wounded.

Walker, Cimino's attorney, said in October that Cimino was under the influence of a drug at the time of the attack, but denied that it was bath salts.

But most standard drug tests cannot detect the presence of these synthetic drugs, according to NMS Labs, a leading national toxicology lab based in Willow Grove.

Every time federal authorities isolate one of the compounds in the synthetic drugs and ban it, the drug manufacturers already have moved on to one of the other hundreds of compounds that can be used in bath salts, Fialko said.

Shortly after news of the attack broke in the fall, The Council began addressing it in its public presentation on today's drug threats for young adults.

"When a young Doylestown adult does something like this, that says it all," Fialko said at the time. "These drugs are a concern. This is something that needs to be addressed now."

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