In the US state of Ohio, a young man has been stung thousands of times by killer bees and seriously injured. The 20-year-old Austin Bellamy had to be put into an artificial coma and artificially ventilated, as the US broadcaster Fox 19 reported on Wednesday. According to his family, he was stung more than 20,000 times.
Bellamy reportedly cut branches from a lemon tree last Friday when he accidentally cut into a nest of African killer bees. “When he started cutting them (the branches) the bees came out,” his grandmother Phyllis Edwards told Fox 19. “He was screaming, ‘Help, help me, help,’ and nobody helped him.”
The family watched from the ground as Bellamy was attacked by the insects – but couldn’t help as she was being attacked herself. She wanted to climb up the ladder to help her grandson, said the grandmother. “But I couldn’t get to him because I was surrounded by bees.”
According to his mother, Bellamy also swallowed around 30 bees. It would have taken the doctors more than a day to suck them out of him. As the family told the Fox19 broadcaster, the 20-year-old has now woken up from the artificial coma. Medics expect Bellamy to make a full recovery.