Pet chimp rips off Connecticut owner's face and hands before eating her eyeballs
WARNING - DISTRESSING CONTENT: The 911 call made by Sandra Herold as her pet chimp Travis savagely attacked her friend Charla Nash is absolutely chilling
The harrowing 911 call from Sandra Herold paints a nightmarish scene, as her frenzied voice is punctuated by her pet chimpanzee's savage cries for help. In an agonizing 12-minute plea, Sandra implores the police to arrive and stop Travis, the chimpanzee she raised as if he were her own child for 14 years.
The dispatcher asks through the horrific screams of Travis in the background, "Tell me, what is the monkey doing?" only to receive a panic-stricken reply. Sandra's voice, laced with desperation, can be heard screaming: "He ripped her apart! Hurry up! Hurry up! Please!" followed by the chilling words, "He-he ripped her face off! He's eating her face!"
Her pleas intensified as she cried out, "Gun! They got to shoot him! Please! Please! Hurry! Hurry! Please! I can't. I can't ... He's eating her! He's eating her! Please! God! Please! Where are they? Where are they?", reports the Irish Star. The Connecticut home became a scene of horror as law enforcement arrived and fatally shot Travis, bringing an end to the gruesome event.
The attack's lone survivor, Charla Nash, miraculously clung to life despite her grim fate essentially being sealed that day. Charla was familiar with Travis, being friends with his 'mom' Sandra, and had come over on a seemingly ordinary day to assist with returning the adored chimp to his enclosure. But tragedy struck as Travis unleashed a brutal onslaught, severely maiming her and robbing her of her face and hands.
In a terrifying display of primal aggression, Travis brutally mutilated her, ripping off her eyelids and nose. He attacked with such ferocity that he scalped her, removed and ate her eyes, and bit off one hand entirely while nearly severing an arm.
Her jaw was completely detached from her skull, resulting in severe brain injuries. The reason behind Travis's violent outburst remains unknown, especially considering his local celebrity status for his unusual behaviors like eating restaurant-prepared lobster, owning a pet cat, and taking joyrides on his lawnmower.
Sandra said she gave him a hefty dose of the anti-anxiety drug Xanax in his tea earlier that day due to his 'agitated' state. She speculated that his aggressive behavior might have been triggered by Charla's new hairstyle. Alternatively, it could have been the overpowering instincts of the 200lb (14st) primate at age 14, or perhaps a growing frustration with his unnatural lifestyle of preparing microwave meals, sipping wine at dinner, and using the toilet like a human.
Travis was only three days old when Sandra purchased him from a breeder for $50,000. His mother was sedated with a tranquilizer dart to enable his capture - from that moment, Travis ceased being a regular chimp and became Sandra's 'son.' To those on the outside, Sandra seemed to share a profoundly deep connection with her chimp, even sharing a bed with him after the loss of her husband.
After the chilling incident on February 16, 2009, the then 70-year-old Sandra described her bond saying: "He couldn't be more my son than if I gave birth to him." But even the strongest bonds can shatter, as Sandra's did when she witnessed her 'son' Travis, her beloved pet chimp, brutally maul her best friend.
She delivered a disturbing recounting where Travis, without warning, lunged at Charla, rising on his hind legs and unleashing a violent battering that launched Charla against the car, subsequently mutilating her face and hands. Amid the chaos, in a bid to halt the brutal attack, Sandra resorted to stabbing Travis in the back with a carving knife and striking him with a shovel.
Upon reflection, Sandra recalled the heart-stopping moment when Travis ceased his attack and turned his gaze upon her, which drove her to flee in absolute fear, barricading herself inside her vehicle. Sandra detailed with agony: "I grabbed the shovel and hit him with the shovel to stop it. It wasn't working, so I went and I had to get a knife - and I stabbed him. I had to.
"He looked at me like, 'Mom, what did you do," she said. When law enforcement arrived, they were met with a horrific scene, Travis in an uncontrollable rage, aggressively bloodied, even managing to open the door to a police car as he tried to assail an officer.
Incredibly, despite being shot at point-blank range multiple times, Travis did not perish right away. He returned to the house, collapsing on his special bed, leaving behind a ghastly trail of blood. His last moments were captured as gunshots echoed in the background during Sandra's desperate 911 call.
Paramedics who arrived at the scene were confronted with the gruesome task of recognizing the victim; the injuries were so severe that determining the person's gender was unfeasible. The scene resembled a macabre movie set, with "strips of flesh and scalp" littering the garden of Sandra's Stamford, Connecticut home.
Initial impressions led them to believe Charla wouldn't survive her injuries – her figure a horrific tableau of blood-drenched tissue, no facial features discernible, submerged in a crimson tide of her blood – until she showed signs of life. That's when the first responders sprang into action, and they managed to save her life.
The ferocious attack caused her to lose half her blood volume, and she would later undergo a face transplant. Sadly, her body later rejected an attempt to transplant hands.
Amidst this tragedy, NBC reporter Jeff Rossen asked Sandra a piercing question: "After what you've been through with this - your friend is in the hospital fighting for her life - do you still think chimps should be pets?"
Her reply was firm: "Would I have done it again? Yes! They're the closest thing to humans - to us. We can give them a blood transfusion, and they can give us one. How many people go crazy and kill other people? This is one incident that I don't know what happened.
"It was a horrible thing. But I'm not a horrible person. And he wasn't a horrible chimp. It was a freak thing." Sandy passed away from an aneurysm 15 months after the incident, laid to rest with two urns; one containing her daughter's ashes, the other housing Travis's.
Charla Nash emerged as a survivor of that dreadful day but has since been plunged into enduring darkness, her identity obscured by a face not originally her own, entirely dependent on the staff at the care facility she now calls home. Before her transformative face transplant, she bared her soul to Oprah Winfrey, grieving for the life she once held dear.
In a moment of reflection on the situation, she recalled: "I've never been a quitter. Unfortunately, there's not a whole lot I can do."
The loss of her independence is a heavy burden, and she expressed this sorrow: "I've lost so much independence. I could change my own truck tyre, and now I can't even feed myself."
Emphasizing the severity of her struggles, she confessed: "It's very hard to live. Not even live - half-live. Sometimes you want to cry, you want out, you want some kind of home. I don't know what my future is, that's the scary part."