Coral Snake Bite Death in Florida

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When the coral snake slithered among them a couple hours before dusk Saturday, the men had been sitting around drinking long-neck bottles of Budweiser in a wide and littered clearing they had made for themselves in the saw palmetto brush.

Within a couple hours, one man would be dead and another in the hospital, clutching a gallon bottle stuffed with the battered snake.

According to the Lee County, Fla., Sheriff’s Office, Fernando Hernandez, 29, collapsed near a railroad line and died. A medic pronounced him dead at 10:15 p.m. The medical examiner’s office is awaiting toxicology reports to confirm the cause of death.

Robert Norris, a snake venom expert and chief of emergency medicine at Stanford University in California, said he suspects Hernandez is the first coral snake fatality on record in the United States since the discovery of anti-venin 40 years ago. Since the 1960s, he said, no deaths from coral snake bites have been reported to the American Association of Poison Control Centers.

“It’s possible that one could slip through the cracks, but this is very unusual,” Norris said. “If there are others, they’ve not been put in the medical literature.”

Another expert isn’t so sure medical history was made Saturday.

Joseph Gennaro, a retired professor from the University of Florida Medical Center, said several people in Florida receive coral snake bites each month and he surmised that although death from a coral snake bite is rare it does occur.

Gennaro said that unlike the fiery sting of a rattlesnake bite, the bite of a coral snake feels as faint as a pin prick. Sometimes people don’t even know when they’ve been bitten, Gennaro said.

The venom is also insidious, working its way slowly through the bloodstream, gradually numbing nerves. A victim’s inability to keep his or her eyes open is the first sign of poison, but it can take an hour or two for that poison to set in. When it does set in, the victim suffocates from lung paralysis.

He said treatment of a bite is arduous and requires pressure immobilization bandages as well as anti-venin. Two years ago a man was bit in Gainesville and it took 20 days for him to recover, Gennaro said.

Sheriff’s spokeswoman Ilena LiMarzi said Jesus Moreida, the friend of the dead man who was also bitten by the coral snake but survived, rode his bicycle to a nearby fire and rescue station for help.

Jose Luis Morales said he had been living in the overgrown area for 10 years and has seen plenty of venomous snakes there. But he said he never saw a man die the way Hernandez did.

“He was a good guy with all respect,” Morales said. “That’s why we all cried.”

Morales said Hernandez, whom he referred to as Cresencio Hernandez, was originally of Ocotlan de Morelos near Oaxaca, Mexico. The sheriff’s office reported he worked as a day laborer.

When the men noticed the serpentine visitor, with gold and crimson bands ringing its body, one of them beat the snake with a branch, but it didn’t retreat. Hernandez took a few whacks at the creature, chasing it toward Moreida, who remained seated on the ground.

Moreida grabbed the reptile to move it out of the way, but it bit him in the hand. In a rage, Hernandez stomped on it. Then he broke a beer bottle and with the jagged glass began to slash the snake. Meanwhile the snake also bit him several times on the forearm, according to a Lee County Sheriff’s report.

With the dead snake stuffed in the gallon bottle, Moreida hopped on a bicycle and rode for help. By then, Hernandez was dead.