The woman who was maimed by a pet chimpanzee last February in Connecticut feared the animal even before the attack, her daughter said Friday.
“She was afraid of him … She was afraid of his strength,” Briana Nash said Friday of her mother, Charla Nash, during her first live interview since the attack. “He could push a cinderblock like it was a feather. She just couldn’t get over the sheer strength of something like that.”
The 17-year-old girl was interviewed by TODAY’s Meredith Vieira in New York and was joined by Charla’s brothers Mike, her twin, and Steve. She talked about her life with her mom, a single mother of great strength of will who was totally devoted to her only child, and told of a tender moment she shared with her mom on Mother’s Day.
It took place in the Cleveland Clinic, the medical center where Charla was taken days after the attack that nearly took her life and left her blind and with a horribly maimed face. She also lost her fingers. The woman was kept under heavy sedation for weeks, but by early May she was able to speak and recognize her family.
Briana said she went to the hospital with her uncle. “I walked in the room. Uncle Mike said, ‘Hey, Charla, I brought your favorite person. Guess who?’ And she said, ‘Briana,’ ” Briana told Vieira, recalling the visit. “I walked up to her and rubbed her arm. It was nice to be there with her again. She asked me if I was cold and I told her no, and she asked me if I wanted to lay with her. I pulled down the arm of the bed and I leaned on her.
Mike and Steve have traded places living in Cleveland and visiting their sister daily. Briana is living with Mike, who has legal guardianship of her.
Mike told Vieira that Charla remembers the moments before the attack. But she refuses to accept that the animal is responsible for the terrible injuries she suffered. He added that on a recent visit, she got so anxious while trying to recall what happened to her that he called a staff psychiatrist at the Cleveland Clinic.
‘He didn’t attack me’
“I called the psychiatrist,” Mike said. “The psychiatrist was explaining to her she was in the hospital, she was attacked by Travis,” the chimpanzee. “She said, ‘No no, he didn’t attack me, they would shoot him.”