chimpanzee attack

The frantic owner of a 200-pound chimpanzee that went berserk in Connecticut pleaded with police over the phone to help her stop the animal from mauling her friend, begging them to "Hurry, please! He ripped her face off."

Police in Stamford released 911 tapes of Sandra Herold's desperate call to police Monday as her 15-year-old chimp, Travis, was attacking 55-year-old Charla Nash.

The chimp can be heard grunting at times on the tape, as Herold cries, "He's killing my friend!"

The dispatcher says, "Who's killing your friend?"

Herold replies, "My chimpanzee! He ripped her apart! Shoot him, shoot him!"

After police arrive, one officer radios back: "There's a man down. He doesn't look good," he says, referring to the disfigured Nash. "We've got to get this guy out of here. He's got no face."

Police say Charla Nash was visiting the home of the primate's owner, 70-year-old Sandra Herold, when the chimp attacked. Herold saved her friend's life by stabbing the 14-year-old chimpanzee with a knife and bludgeoning him with a shovel. The chimp was eventually killed by a police officer who responded to a 911 call and shot the animal as it opened the door and entered his patrol car.

Herold says she loved her chimp, Travis, like a child, and she has reportedly called the incident a "freak thing." But animal experts say chimpanzees are enormously powerful primates that, though highly evolved, remain wild animals despite attempts to domesticate them.

"Travis is just one story out of many, and all of them end badly," Dr. Virginia Landau, vice president of The Jane Goodall Institute and director of its Chimpanzoo Program, told FOXNews.com.

"He wanted to be the boss. In the wild, he'd be working his way up the social ladder and be taking on females in the group to make them more submissive."

Chimp attack: 'As I stabbed him to save my friend, he looked at me as if to say, Mom, what did you do?'

THE owner of a 14-stone chimpanzee that was shot dead after mauling a woman in the United States called the incident "a freak thing" yesterday and insisted that her pet was not a "horrible" animal.

Sandra Herold, 70, told NBC's Today Show that Travis, her 14-year-old chimp, had been like a son to her, despite the fact it nearly killed her friend, Charla Nash, 55, in a frenzied attack on Monday.

As Travis attacked Ms Nash, his owner frantically stabbed her beloved pet with a butcher's knife and hit him with a shovel.

"He looked at me like, 'Mom, what did you do?'," Ms Herold told NBC. "It was horrific what happened, and I had to do what I had to do but, still, I'll miss him for the rest of my life."

Ms Nash remained in a critical condition yesterday, with major injuries to her face and hands. Police are looking into the possibility of criminal charges. A pet owner in Ms Herold's home state, Connecticut, can be held criminally responsible if he or she knew, or should have known, an animal was a danger to others.

Connecticut law requires anyone who owns a primate heavier than 50lbs to obtain a state permit. But Ms Herold was exempted from the law.

Dennis Schain, of the state's department of environmental protection, explained: "Given that the family owned Travis before this law was put on the books, and the fact that over the years the animal did not appear to present a public safety risk, their possession of the chimpanzee was allowed to continue."

Ms Herold, a widow whose daughter died in a car accident several years ago, said

Travis "couldn't have been more my son than if I gave birth to him", and she rejected claims chimpanzees were inappropriate pets.

"It's a horrible thing, but I'm not a horrible person and he's not a horrible chimp," she said.

Police said Travis, who appeared in TV commercials when he was younger, had been agitated earlier on Monday and that Ms Herold had given him the anti-anxiety drug Xanax in some tea. Police said the drug had not been prescribed for the chimp.

In humans, Xanax can cause memory loss, lack of co-ordination, reduced sex drive and other side-effects.

Dr Emil Coccaro, the head of psychiatry at the University of Chicago Medical Centre, said it could also lead to aggression in people who were unstable to begin with. He said if human studies were any indication, "Xanax could have made him worse".

Investigators said they were also told Travis had Lyme disease, a tick-borne illness with flu-like symptoms that can lead to arthritis and meningitis in humans.

Ms Nash had gone to her friend's home in Stamford on Monday to help her coax the chimp back into the house after he got out. After the animal attacked Ms Nash when she got out of her car, Ms Herold ran to get the knife and stabbed him.

Travis ran away and started roaming Ms Herold's property until police arrived. He then went after several of the officers, one of whom shot Travis several times after the chimp opened the door to his police car and started to get in.