Man dies after one of his venomous pet Gila monsters bites him, Colorado cops say
A 34-year-old man died after one of his two venomous pet Gila monsters bit him, according to police and news reports.
Police said they responded to a Lakewood home Feb. 12 after a call about an animal bite.
After the 34-year-old man’s girlfriend called, saying he was “having a reaction,” he was taken to a hospital, according to a police report.
The woman later told police she was in a different room when her boyfriend was bitten, so she was not sure exactly what led to the bite, the report says.
However, the woman told police she heard him saying something, and “it didn’t sound right,” the report says. She entered the room to find the lizard latched on to his hand.
The woman said her boyfriend began “exhibiting symptoms,” vomiting before he passed out and stopped breathing, police said.
Two days after the man was admitted to the hospital, his girlfriend told police his doctors planned to have him declared brain dead, the report says.
The man died at a hospital over the weekend, police told KDVR.
An autopsy was done, but the man’s official cause of death is pending a toxicology test, CBS News reported.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife made plans to have the reptiles transported to Reptile Gardens in South Dakota, according to the report.
In a Feb. 20 email to McClatchy News, a Colorado Parks and Wildlife spokesperson said they took two reptiles from a Lakewood home and “transported them to a facility out of state.”
The reptile, “one of only a small number of venomous lizards,” are illegal to own in Colorado without a license, Eric Harper, an investigator with Colorado Parks and Wildlife, told CBS.
While bites from the reptiles are painful for humans, they rarely result in death, according to the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance.
“The vast majority of bites cause local swelling and bleeding,” Nick Brandehoff, a medical toxicologist and expert in reptile bites with the Asclepius Snakebite Foundation, told CBS News. “The last case I have been able to find was 1930.”
Measuring up to 22 inches in length, the reptile is the largest lizard in the country, according to the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute. They are primarily found in Arizona and Mexico.
Lakewood is about 8 miles southwest of Denver.
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