Stamford Chimpanzee Attacks Woman

On February 16th, Travis, a 200-pound primate lost control and attacked a woman. The huge ape went wild at his long time owner's home and mauled the face of 55-year -old Charla Nash. Sandy Herold, who had Travis since the age of 3, unsuccessfully tried stopping him with a shovel before she had to stab him with a knife to get him off of Nash. Travis then escaped and it wasn't until cops arrived that he was eventually shot to death when he attempted to open the car door of the patrol vehicle. After ripping off the mirror of the car, Travis was repeatedly shot by an officer before returning inside his home where he died.

The 15-year old chimp attacked Charla Nash so badly that she was mistaken by a cop for a male. She suffered severe hand and facial injuries and was taken to the Stamford Hospital. This was not the first time Travis escaped either. In 2003, Travis got away from Herold and was stopped by cops later on. He was caught playing in an intersection where cops then had to sedate him in order to capture him and put an end to the traffic gridlock. He was also known around his neighborhood because there were times Herold admitted to Travis' taking off with her car and going on joy rides. Here is a video of a woman describing an earlier time when Travis had attacked her previous to this incident, but she was not able to get authorities to take notice and see Travis for the threat he was...the video also features the 911 call from Herold:

Sandy Herold, 70, who lost her husband 5 years prior to this incident and her daughter to a car crash, raised Travis as a human and essentially as her own son: He was fed steak, lobster tails, took his own baths, ate at the table and drank wine from a stemmed glass. He also brushed his teeth using a Water Pik, according to the Stamford Advocate. In addition to this, he was a television Pro, appearing on commercials for Old Navy and Coca Cola.

There is speculation that Travis may have been set off due to Nash's change of hairstyle that day, making her unrecognizable to the chimp and therefore a threat. However, the interesting part of the story is that Herold had given Travis, Xanax, an anti-anxiety drug in tea earlier Monday and it was not prescribed for him. "In humans, Xanax can cause memory loss, lack of coordination, reduced sex drive and other side effects. It can also lead to aggression in people who were unstable to begin with" said Dr. Emil Coccaro, chief of psychiatry at the University of Chicago Medical Center. She also said that Xanax could have possibly made Travis worse if human studies are any indication. source

Travis was also said to have had Lyme disease, a tick-borne illness with flu-like symptoms that could have also played a part in his lash out at Charla Nash.

Here is another article and another video pertaining to the incident:

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Given all the information disclosed about this situation, do you feel that animals like Chimps can be pets, socialized into normal everyday human activities? Was this story an anomaly or was this more about bestiality than anything else? Let me know your thoughts...