On his last day, at age 14, and morbidly obese at 250 pounds, Travis seemed agitated after a lunch of fish and chips and ice cream cake. Sandy popped a Xanax in his tea and called her friend Charla to ask her to come over and help settle him down. When Charla arrived, Travis attacked her. Sandy came running out and started beating Travis over the head with a shovel, but he just continued tearing Charla apart. Sandy even stabbed him repeatedly with a kitchen knife, but he wouldn’t stop. Sandy ran to her car and dialed 911. When the first police officer arrived, Travis staggered up to his car and opened the door.



The officer lurched. He struggled to remove his gun from its holster. His body became wedged against the center-console computer. Travis stared into the car, baring his blood-streaked teeth. In one swift motion the officer at last released his gun and fired four rounds. Travis staggered backward, screeched, defecated, and ran off.

The officer got out of his car. Huge chunks of scalp and fingers lay scattered around the yard. He walked slowly to the body. With the stump of what remained of her arm, Charla Nash reached for his leg.

As another group of officers set out into the woods to look for him, Travis scampered unnoticed into the house. Leaving a trail of blood, he knuckle-walked through the kitchen, the bedroom, and into his room. Then he grasped his bedpost, heaved forward, and died.

Charla Nash’s injuries were overwhelming. Travis had bitten or torn away her eyelids, nose, jaw, lips, and most of her scalp. He’d broken nearly all the bones of her facial structure. He’d fully removed one of her hands and virtually all of the other. He’d rendered her blind.

It is a tragedy in the true sense of the word – a morality tale of the human condition, of the arrogance of presuming to “own” other animals who belong with their own families in their own natural homes; of our blindness to their nature and to our own; and of the wreck and ruin that inevitably follow.