The Connecticut woman who was horribly disfigured when a friend’s pet chimpanzee attacked her in 2009 made a shocking video pleading with lawmakers to let her sue the state for $150 million.
Charla Nash, 60, said in the seven-minute video that the gruesome attack – which required her to undergo an agonizing face transplant – left her so reliant on others that she feels like she is living in a cage.
“It’s a different world to not be able to see again or to use your hands and just do things for yourself. That you have to depend on other people for help now, it’s very hard,” Nash said in the video. “I feel like I’m locked up. I feel like I’m in a cage.”
Nash’s video will be sent to members of the General Assembly’s Judiciary Committee.
She claimed the state had the obligation to seize the dangerous animal – but the state is generally immune to lawsuits, unless allowed by the claims commissioner, who had rejected her request to sue last June.
But the committee is scheduled to meet Friday to hear testimony on a bill that would override the decision.
“I’m hoping that the legislation will allow me to have my day in court, that I will be able to have a judge listen to the evidence that is brought before him about the vicious attack on me and that it shall not happen to any other person again,” said Nash, who also lost both hands and was blinded when the 200-pound chimp named Travis went berserk when Nash went to visit its owner, Sandra Herold, in her Stamford home.
Speaking from her room at a Massachusetts nursing home, where she is awaiting a second attempt at a hand transplant, Nash described how she has suffered in the five years since the attack.
Nash reached a $4 million settlement in 2012 with Herold’s estate after her death in 2010, but her lawyers say that will cover only a fraction of her medical bills.
“It’s a shame that this attack had to happen, unfortunately,” she said. “But now I’m trying to work the best I can to have my sanity. I want to be as normal as I can be.”