Bizarrely echoing Steve Irwin's recent tragedy, an 81-year-old South Florida resident James Bertakis was in his 16-foot jet boat yesterday with his two adult granddaughters when a a young spotted eagle ray leapt from the water, "flew into the boat," and stabbed Bertakis in the heart, leaving a foot-long toxic barb lodged in his chest. His granddaughters piloted the boat to shore and -- oddly -- rushed him home. Soon after, medical officials found Bertakis lying on his living room floor, conscious, breathing, but complaining of excruciating pain. The paramedics collected him and rushed him to the hospital. He underwent heart surgery last night, where surgeons discovered Bertaki was suffering from a closed chest wound and a collapsed lung. Frighteningly, the doctors were able to remove only a portion of the barb. Unable to locate the rest, they fear it might have migrated.
Out of water, the 30-pound ray died on the boat. Local fire officials recovered the ray and are keeping it in a garbage bag at the station house, indicating they might need it later in an investigation. For a video report of the attack -- and to see the ray -- check out Channel 4 video.
1. Meh. Sensationalistic journalism at it's finest. I saw this on CNN's website this morning and for starters they had a picture of a little yellow stingray rather than an eagle ray and made it almost sound like this ray saw the old guy in the boat and ATTACKED. I've seen eagle rays breach before. I don't know why but i would guess that they were asleep in the shallow water and the boat scared the bejabbers out of it and it accelerated and went UP and out of the water.
This was just... such a freak accident that the odds probably wouldn't even have been posted on golden palace. Or then again... maybe this is the opening salvo in the great human-stingray war that our great-grandchildren will tell to their grandchildren... :)
Posted at 12:34PM on Oct 19th 2006 by Mark