Good Samaritan Stops to Help Snake, Winds Up in Coma

Joseph Ricciardella was bitten by a rattlesnake, which are rare in Connecticut
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Aug 1, 2024 2:55 PM CDT
Good Samaritan Stops to Help Snake, Winds Up in Coma
This undated image shows Joseph Ricciardella and his daughter, Mia.   (Brittany Hilmeyer via AP)

When Joseph Ricciardella saw the snake in the road, he stopped his car and tried to help it avoid getting run over. The attempted good deed landed him in a Connecticut hospital in a medically induced coma after the timber rattlesnake—rare in the Northeast—bit his hand when he threw a shirt over it and tried to pick it up, says Brittany Hilmeyer, his former girlfriend and the mother of his daughter. Ricciardella called her on Sunday to say he had just been bitten and was driving to the hospital. His voice sounded odd, like Donald Duck, she tells the AP. It happened as Ricciardella was driving from a park in upstate New York to his home in Torrington, Connecticut, about 25 miles west of Hartford.

It isn't clear exactly where the encounter happened because he hasn't been able to speak in detail to family and friends. Ricciardella, 45, a father of four who runs a landscaping business, went into cardiac arrest, was resuscitated, and was later placed into a medically induced coma after being flown from a hospital in Torrington to one in Hartford. Doctors brought him out of the coma on Tuesday, but he remained intubated and sedated because of swelling from the venom.

"It was surprising that, like, anybody would try to pick up a rattlesnake," Hilmeyer said. "But it doesn't surprise me in the same sense because he kind of always did that. If he saw an animal on the side of the road or in the road, he would try to stop and get them out of the road." Ricciardella has no medical insurance, and his family has set up a GoFundMe account for his medical bills. The timber rattlesnake is one of two venomous snakes found in Connecticut—the other being the northern copperhead—and is extremely rare, according to state wildlife officials. The snake is listed as endangered there.

(More rattlesnake stories.)

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