La terrible historia de Charla Nash ocurrió en 2009, pero sigue resonando en los medios hasta el día de hoy. Es que esta mujer fue brutalmente atacada por un chimpancé que le arrancó la cara y las manos. The consequences de esta tragedia todavía pesan sobre la mujer, que quedó inválida por el resto de su vida y recibió un trasplante de rostro que le provocó infinidad de inconvenientes.

The tragic event happened in Connecticut, United States.The monkey, called Travis, was owned by a friend of the victim, Sandra Herold, who had adopted him since he was a baby.

Travis was born on October 21, 1995 in a Chimpanzees sanctuary in the state of Misuri.Herold and her husband Jerome adopted it there, when the animal was only three days old.The family treated him as one more member.

Travis went to the store with his “parents”, played with them and with the neighbors, had learned to open and close doors, water the plants, use the remote television control, turn on the computer and even, once, whathad let a car drive.

The animal was an intelligence prodigy.He brushed his teeth, too, and ate at the table with the family.Even, on several occasions they had given him wine to drink.

In addition, Chimpanzee had known fame by starring several advertising shorts and in the occasional television program.

When Jerome died of cancer in 2004 and the couple's son also died in a car accident, Travis became a kind of son for Sandra.But the supposed pet was still a wild animal.

In 2003, when a passerby threw an object into the car where Travis was traveling and came to hit him, the monkey got out of the vehicle and ran by many blocks.Fortunately, the person escaped, but the animal did not want to return to the car and had to intervene the police.

From that fact, the laws changed in Connecticut and could no longer have exotic animals in the house that weigh more than 22 kilos.But, although Travis already weighed 91 kilos and was a considerable bearing, he remained with Mrs. Herold because she had already lived with the family for many years and did not consider it a danger.

They were wrong.

Travis's attack

On February 16, 2009 Talk Nash, who was then 55 years old, went to visit his friend Sandra, 70.Travis knew her, but apparently he was disoriented by the new visitor's hairstyle.But the disaster occurred when the woman took one of the ape toys in her hands.

It was then that Travis went to Nash and attacked her beastly, biting her and scratching her without contemplation.

At the time the attack happened, Sandra Herold called 911 to come help her and said a phrase that should have sounded incredible for the police: "My chimpanzee is eating my friend".The animal bit Nash a nose, eyes, lips, eyelids and hands.

The attack lasted about 12 dramatic minutes.Sandra tried to stop through.First he hit him with a shovel and then stabbed him three times with a butcher knife, but failed to stop him.Finally, a police officer appeared who felt the monkey with four shots.

The wounds suffered by Nash were "horrific", according to the doctors themselves who attended it on the day of the tragedy.The woman had to endure more than seven hours of face and hands surgery, executed by four teams of surgeons.

The consequences

She lost her hands, her nose, lips and part of the bone structure of the face.In addition, he suffered brain trauma and lost his eyes.His family had to organize a campaign to pay the huge hospital account.

When analyzing the body of the final monkey, they found that he had no anger, but the Xanax drug, a tranquilizer that Mrs. Herold had administered.Some of the effects of this substance are disorientation and, rarely, hallucinations, anger and aggressiveness.

Herold died of an aneurysm a year after the frightful attack.Nash won US $ 4 million in a lawsuit made against her friend's assets.

In one of his last interviews, Nash said he was living in a specialized center where they took care of her: “I lost a lot of independence.I could change the wheel of a truck and now I can't even eat alone.It is very difficult to live.Don't even live, half live.Sometimes I want to cry, go out, go home.I don't know what my future is and that's what scared me, ”he told Boston Herald in 2014.

In 2016, they entered her urgently for a new rejection on the transplanted face and managed to survive.Last year, Nash assured the British newspaper The Sun that advocates laws that prohibit the possession of primates as pets.