Chiafari

The police officer who was first on the scene at last year’s savage chimpanzee attack in Connecticut says in a new interview that he feared for his own life after seeing how badly the victim was injured.

Stamford, Conn. Police Officer Frank Chiafari suffered post-traumatic stress disorder after killing a 200-pound pet chimpanzee that tore off the face and hands of victim Charla Nash.

Chiafari spoke out about the incident to Dr. Mehmet Oz on the “Dr. Oz Show.”
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A 25-year veteran of the force, Chiafari was at a coffee shop when a call came over the radio about a “monkey attacking.” The dispatcher urged officers to hurry to the scene.

“As I was driving up, I see at the end of the driveway ... I didn't even recognize it as a person at the time," Chiafari said of the badly-injured Nash, a neighbor who was visiting the chimp’s owner, Sandra Herold. “Then I realized it was a person, and I could not tell if it was male or female.”

"It was terrible what this animal did to this woman," he said. Chiafari parked the car, and Herold’s pet chimp Travis started “bashing on the window. That was terror on terror at this point. He was trying to break the glass to get at me.”


Video
Chimp victim: ‘I just want to go on with my life’
Nov. 16, 2009: Charla Nash, who was brutally attacked by her friend’s chimpanzee, opens up to TODAY’s Meredith Vieira.

Today show

The chimp then “calmly walks in front of my car to the driver’s door, pulls open the door and comes around the door and looks at me,” Chiafari remembers.

“We’re both kind of in shock, looking at each other, and the chimp gave me a split second to draw my gun ... Now he raises his arm and gives me a snarl and proceeds to come at me,” Chiafari told Oz. “I still ... don’t know how I drew my gun ... but as I’m shooting I do remember he still is coming at me and I’m thinking, ‘Are there blanks in this thing?’”

The officer added that the chimp then touched him, and he remembers “feeling his fur and there’s a bloody handprint from him on the car. And he gave me a last scream, and he just ran.”

Chiafari said strong family support got him through the ordeal. “I love my family more than anything in the world,” he said.

To help cope with post-traumatic stress disorder in the months following the attack, Chiafari sought therapy and started taking long walks with his family. For Chiafari, it was important to actively pursue healing instead of “focusing on the pain.”

The chimp, Travis, later died of gunshot wounds. Charla Nash, 56, miraculously survived the savage attack, though she is disfigured and blinded. In a November 2009 interview, Nash told TODAY’s Meredith Vieira that she doesn’t remember the Feb. 16, 2009 mauling. She also said she hopes she can receive a face transplant in the future.

As for Officer Chiafari, he was so affected by the incident that he took a leave from work, but the city of Stamford denied his worker’s compsenation claim. Last month, Connecticut lawmakers passed a bill that would make police eligible for workers’ compensation benefits following life-threatening encounters with animals.