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THE TIMES (London, UK) 10 June 05 Scotsman was killed by his brand new snakes (Sam Knight)
A Scottish man found dead in a rented car in Arkansas last summer was killed by one of the four deadly snakes he had just bought, a medical examiner confirmed today.
The body of Garrick Wales, a 49-year-old businessman from Kilmacolm in Scotland, was found on May 13 2004 in a rubbish strewn lane just next to Little Rock airport.
A few days later, a cardboard box with Mr Wales's name on it was found nearby with four poisonous snakes inside. Mr Wales had bought the snakes in Florida and sent them on to Arkansas where he picked them up.
"It would appear that Mr Wales had left the airport with his newly acquired snakes and took one or more of them out of the box to handle them," wrote Dr Charles Kokes in the autopsy report published today by the Arkansas State Medical Examiner's office.
"He then acquired a bite on his right back, put the snake in its bag, and put the snakes (in) the yard where they were ultimately discovered."
According to Little Rock police, the snake seller who sold Mr Wales the creatures said he was going to deliver them to a woman in Arkansas. That woman has never been traced.
In his report, Dr Kokes added that it was impossible to know which one of the snakes - a forest cobra, a green mamba, a black mamba and a twig snake - had given the fatal bite because of the way snake venom breaks down in the blood. The snakes were later given to Little Rock Zoo and shipped to a zoo in Lufkin, Texas, where the twig snake died.
Mr Wales, a married father of three, was known to be a snake enthusiast and to have been bitten before.
Eighteen months before his death, Mr Wales sustained a vicious bite from a boomslang snake in South Africa and had to be given 90 units of red blood cells to fight the poison. His friends say he never fully recovered from the bite, and today's autopsy said that Mr Wales suffered from periods of amnesia and anaemia.
After initial inquiries last year failed to find bitemarks on Mr Wales's body, it was thought that he may have finally succumbed to the boomslang.
Other theories were prompted by hypodermic needles found both in Mr Wales's rented car and in the box of snakes. According to Dr Kokes's report, Mr Wales may have been injecting himself with snake venom to treat his earlier bite or to build up an immunity to poison.
"It would appear that Mr. Wales likely had some sort of unusual fascination with highly venomous snakes," Dr Kokes concluded.
Scotsman was killed by his brand new snakes

Now thats sort of creepy! Wonder if it was suicide? He could have have gotten some help if he was able to stay conscious long enough to re-bag the snake and place the box in a yard?
Another arrow for the quiver of banning hots...
Now they're immigrating to get bit!

This is too funny. I recieved a phone call on my cell phone from an editor in the U.K. doing a story on this guy. I was told that according to the autopsy report they believed he was a self innoculator. The editor wanted to know why anyone would do this. I told him of the study in India of people self sticking as a recreational drug. To get a buzz and a high. I have very little info regarding that though. I also obviously talked about B. Haast and his regimen of percieved (real?) resistance from particular snake venoms from innoculating with said venoms. There is a story going to be published with hopefully some more info in this regard. But I guess from the editor I spoke too, it sounded like he innoculated himself and then allowed himself to be bitten to test the resisitance. It is thought that he allowed himself to be bitten by the boomslang in Africa last year!!! The editor asked me why someone would do such a thing? I told him, from a boomslang! No one in their right mind would 'allow' a boomer to bite them! I don't care what kind of 'resistance' he thought he had.
I also told him that it was ludicrous to self innoculate as it is very easy to avoid being bitten period and if a mistake occurred and a bite happened that antivenom was a very effective method of treating said bite. So, there truly is no reason whatsoever to self innoculate! ( for those that disagree with me on the subject of S.I., you didn't really think I would talk about the subject without bashing it did you?) just kidding hahahha
Anyway, I have a website for the story when it is published and will post it if/when it runs.
Best Regards all
Terry
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It's what you learn AFTER you know it all that counts!

Terry Phillip
Curator of Reptiles
Black Hills Reptile Gardens
Rapid City, SD.

www.reptilegardens.com

This is all very interesting. Being that I reside in the state in which this little incident occured, and have received snakes at that same airport, and have actually received snakes from the same importing company this guy got his from, I was particularly interested in this story. I was away in Belize last year when this first happened, but heard about it pretty quickly. At first people were saying it was a bite and so forth, but then when I much later spoke to the main Delta lady at the airport, she said they actually found out that the guy was a recreational drug user and that he had overdosed, rather than been envenomated. It seems as though either she was mistaken, or the person who wrote this press release is now mistaken, but they both can't be right.

It's definitely a very strange incidence indeed, and the more information they released about it - such as his transvestite friend he visited in the states on occasion, etc etc etc - the weirder it gets. I am now curious if he really did die from one of the snakes he received that day. From the situation I read and heard about, him sitting in his car in a pool of his own vomit on the airport grounds, and the fact that no one saw any bite marks at least initially, my bet would be with one of the Dendros. However, there's no telling. In all likelihood, it could have been a combination of the supposed drugs the guy was on, as well as SI and maybe even an envenomation. I agree 100% with Terry though, surely the guy didn't intentionally let a boomslang envenomate him! I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that this doesn't lead to any new legislation for Arkansas, though I won't be surprised at all if it does. They're preparing to put a licensing system in place for people who keep large carnivores, and at $250 per year per animal you have on the list, that could get costly if they applied the same thing to snakes. I guess we can only wait and see.
-Chance
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Chance Duncan
www.rivervalleyexotics.com

Terry: Just out of curiosity, why the perceived (real?) slap at Bill Haast?

~~Greg~~

I should recant a little. I don't find the story 'funny' as in humerous. That should be taken as 'bizarre.'
Also, there was no 'slap' towards Mr. Haast??
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It's what you learn AFTER you know it all that counts!

Terry Phillip
Curator of Reptiles
Black Hills Reptile Gardens
Rapid City, SD.

www.reptilegardens.com

And people wonder why there are moves to ban the keeping of highly venomous snakes?

All I can say is thank God this guy took himself out of the gene pool with enough (albeit limited) foresight to close up the snake box before dumping it.

I do find it interesting that nobody could determine the biting species; doing so involves a fairly simple sandwich enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) technique that any halfway competent pathology laboratory could set up for the particular species involved. More to the point I am sure a number of venom research labs already have tests up and running for these species, and would have been happy to do the tests if asked.

But at the end of the day, we herpers really should be grateful that the snakes were not simply tossed out loose, or discovered by someone unfortunate enough to have unintentionally let them loose (and perhaps been bitten in the process); then the legislators really would have something to dance about!

Forward the file to the Darwin Award Committee I say.

Cheers

David Williams
Australian Herpetology ONLINE

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David Williams
PNG Snake Venom Research Project
PO Box 168
Port Moresby, NCD, PNG.

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