She agreed to help a friend – but what happened next changed her life forever.
Charla Nash wasn’t a celebrity. She didn’t seek the spotlight. She was just a kind-hearted woman trying to help a friend in need. But one unthinkable moment would thrust her into the public eye — and leave the nation stunned.
It started with a phone call. Her longtime friend, Sandra Herold, was frantic. Her beloved pet chimpanzee, Travis, had taken Sandra’s car keys and left her house in Stamford, Connecticut, with them.
The 55-year-old Charla, always loyal and dependable, rushed over to help and tried to get Travis back inside his closure. But what happened next would become one of the most horrifying animal attacks in American history.
When Charla walked up to Travis, the 200-pound chimpanzee suddenly snapped. The sight of her holding an Elmo doll — once one of his favorite toys — sent him into a violent, uncontrollable rage.
Inside the brutal attack
The attack was brutal. Travis tore off her hands, her nose, her eyelids, and lips.
Sandra, the 70-year-old owner of Travis, attempted to stop him by beating Travis on the head with a shovel and stabbing him in the back with a butcher knife. She later said Travis looked back at her as if to say, “Mom, what did you do?”
”For me to do something like that, put a knife in him, was like putting one in myself,” Sandra later said.
When Charla was lying lifeless on the ground, Sandra called 911. At first, the operator thought the call was a hoax — until Sandra cried out: “He’s eating her!”
When emergency vehicles arrived, they found Charla face down in the driveway.
Emergency services were ordered to hold back until police arrived. When they came, the chimpanzee was far from done.
Travis stormed toward the patrol car, violently shaking it, attempting to pry open the locked passenger door, and even ripped off the side-view mirror. Stamford police officer Frank Chiafari recalled the sheer terror of that moment.
“It was like ‘Jurassic Park,’” he said in a documentary about the incident. “We’re looking at each other and he pulls the door (of the police car) right off.”
Officer Chiafari opened fire. Travis retreated back into the house, where he eventually died from his injuries.
“It was a horrendous, terrible scene,” Chiafari recalled.
