Trying to calm him down, Herold gave the chimp some tea laced with the anti-anxiety drug Xanax. He had stolen the keys to her car and gone into the yard. Travis was acting “rambunctious” on Monday. “When one animal becomes violent, we shouldn’t hold it against all animals any more than if it was a human being,” Allred said.

Who’s to say one is better than another?” “There are animals all across America that are living in circumstances that are different from sanctuaries. They all have personalities, built-in traits,” LaDonna Davis told Morales. His wife lost a thumb.Īnd yet, like Herold, the Davises maintained that chimpanzees should be allowed to live with humans. James Davis wears a prosthetic nose and his face is scarred from the attack and the scores of surgeries he has undergone. In February 2009, Travis and his owner Sandra Hero. Moe was not involved in the attack.Īfter Rossen’s report, the Davises and their attorney, Gloria Allred, spoke from California with TODAY’s Natalie Morales. Travis was a male common chimpanzee who attacked and nearly killed a woman in North Stamford, Connecticut. A ranger at the refuge shot and killed both chimps. James Davis was savagely mauled, losing an eye and several fingers as well as sustaining other injuries. While they were feeding Moe birthday cake through a hole in his fenced enclosure, two adolescent chimpanzees somehow escaped from their own enclosure at the refuge and attacked the Davises. James and LaDonna Davis of West Covina, Calif., were visiting Moe, a 39-year-old chimp they had raised as a human, at a wildlife refuge the chimpanzee had been sent to by a court after he showed aggressive behavior in 1999.

Such attacks are rare, but they have happened before. How many people go crazy and kill other people? This is one incident that I don't know what happened.” “We can give them a blood transfusion, and they can give us one. They're the closest thing to humans - to us,” Herold said. “It will be a great day for Charla and for all of us.“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?” Rossen asked her. “I think her new face will allow her to be present when Brianna graduates from college in a few years,” he says. Pomahac notes that Nash did not attend her daughter Brianna’s high school graduation last year because she didn’t want to distract from the ceremonies. Nash went on the Oprah Show and displayed her blank and mangled features.īut she’s generally been loathe to go out in public without a veil. A harrowing 911 recording from the chimp’s owner, pleading with police to come and shoot the rampaging chimp, has been widely circulated.įollowing her initial restorative surgery at the Cleveland Clinic. Many people know of Nash because her injuries were so horrific – the angry chimp ripped off her face and gnawed her hands and forearm. The functioning of the face will really add to the quality of her life.” Nash’s brother Steve calls the transplant results “outstanding.” She will need lifelong immune-suppressing drugs to prevent the donor tissue from being rejected.

Nash is still on and off a ventilator and sedated much of the time, although Pomahac says she is communicating through nods and arm gestures. Her eyes had to be removed after the attack. She could eat, smell, express her emotion and feel the face.” When the transplanted tissue heals and nerves regrow – a process that will take at least nine months and possibly longer – Pomahac says Nash “should control the face well. “We’re optimistic that should Charla choose in the future, we could transplant the hands again, should a suitable donor be identified.”ĭespite the loss of the hands, Pomahac says, “I consider it still a success” because Nash has a very good chance of regaining “a very functional face.” “After several days of doing everything possible to retain the hands, it was clear that they were not thriving,” Pomahac said at a press conference. That compromised blood flow to the transplanted hands, so surgeons had to remove them. But after the operation Nash suffered a blood infection that caused her blood pressure to crash. In a 20-hour operation, surgeon Bohdan Pomahac says the team transplanted hands from the same donor. And while doctors have high hopes for her recovery, the other part of the surgery didn’t go so well. She’ received a full-face transplant at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston - only the third American to receive the operation.

Chimpanzee rips face off of woman