BlueOceanView
New Member
- Joined
- Feb 26, 2008
- Messages
- 105
- Reaction score
- 0
Michigan woman dies after leaping stingray gets on boat
A woman from the Thumb died after a large stingray leaped from the water off the Florida Keys on Thursday and struck her in the head while she was on a fishing boat with her family, officials said.
The stingray also struck her sister. She suffered minor injuries and was released from the hospital Thursday afternoon.
The spotted eagle ray surged as high as 8 feet before landing on the head of Judy Kay Zagorski, 55, of Pigeon, who died in the middle of the boat as her mother and father scrambled to try to resuscitate her, said Officer Bobby Dube of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
It's unclear what killed Zagorski -- whether a barb punctured her or she banged her head on the boat from the weight of the 75-pound stingray.
"There was that potential" that a barb punctured her "because there was a large amount of blood from her head," Dube said.
A medical examiner is expected to conduct an autopsy today.
Stingrays usually jump to escape predators, not to attack, said Christopher Lowe, a stingray expert at California State University, Long Beach.
"For someone to be standing in a boat and hit in the head by a stingray is pretty remarkable," Lowe said. "It's incredibly bad luck." Zagorski's family couldn't be reached for comment.
A man with Michigan connections suffered a similar incident in 2006, one month after "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin was killed by a stingray.
James Bertakis, who founded a Roseville manufacturing company, was on a boat near his home in Florida when a stingray flopped aboard and punctured the then-81-year-old's heart. He survived.
Contact STEVE NEAVLING at 586-469-4935 or sneavling@freepress.com. Staff writer Dan Cortez contributed to this report.
A woman from the Thumb died after a large stingray leaped from the water off the Florida Keys on Thursday and struck her in the head while she was on a fishing boat with her family, officials said.
The stingray also struck her sister. She suffered minor injuries and was released from the hospital Thursday afternoon.
The spotted eagle ray surged as high as 8 feet before landing on the head of Judy Kay Zagorski, 55, of Pigeon, who died in the middle of the boat as her mother and father scrambled to try to resuscitate her, said Officer Bobby Dube of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
It's unclear what killed Zagorski -- whether a barb punctured her or she banged her head on the boat from the weight of the 75-pound stingray.
"There was that potential" that a barb punctured her "because there was a large amount of blood from her head," Dube said.
A medical examiner is expected to conduct an autopsy today.
Stingrays usually jump to escape predators, not to attack, said Christopher Lowe, a stingray expert at California State University, Long Beach.
"For someone to be standing in a boat and hit in the head by a stingray is pretty remarkable," Lowe said. "It's incredibly bad luck." Zagorski's family couldn't be reached for comment.
A man with Michigan connections suffered a similar incident in 2006, one month after "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin was killed by a stingray.
James Bertakis, who founded a Roseville manufacturing company, was on a boat near his home in Florida when a stingray flopped aboard and punctured the then-81-year-old's heart. He survived.
Contact STEVE NEAVLING at 586-469-4935 or sneavling@freepress.com. Staff writer Dan Cortez contributed to this report.
