Connecticut native Charla Nash made a rare public appearance before lawmakers on Friday urging them to create a law that would allow her to sue the state. Nash's request is spurred from the injuries and the disability she incurred following an attack by a pet chimpanzee named Travis in 2009. The New York Daily News said that Nash wants to sue the state for $150 million for its failure to protect her from the pet owned by her close friend Sandy Herold.
In her appearance, Nash had pointed to a memo issued by the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection of Connecticut, which labeled Travis as an accident that is waiting to happen. The memo, which was issued by the department a year before the attack happened, also said that the powerful primate could hurt someone seriously, Daily News said. Nash claimed that the memo is evidence that authorities have failed to act and seize Travis considering that they deemed that the animal could cause trouble.
Nash said in a previously recorded address, "I feel like I'm locked up. I feel like I'm in a cage. 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."
The attack had left Nash blind and an unrecognizable face, Daily News said. She later went under a full face transplant and now has prosthetic eyes. Both of her hands were also ripped off by the primate.
Travis was shot by a cop after the primate ripped a door of a police cruiser open and flashed his fangs, which was drenched with blood. Daily News said that investigators in Nash's case thought that the usually sociable and familial primate had a change of behavior due to either taking Xanax, which is an anxiety and panic-prevention pill, or that he had a reaction to Nash's then change of hairdo and thought of her as a stranger.
Nash won a $4 million settlement with Herold's estate in 2012. Herold had died two years before, Daily News said.
