Bloodied face of brain damaged disabled pensioner who was bitten by a rat while she slept
TSB News reports that the 76-year-old is unable to move as she has brain damage, she is looked after for by her husband John Kirk, 85, along with a care team who come into their house to help out.
She sleeps downstairs in a hospital bed while Mr Kirk sleeps upstairs.
He said he woke when he first heard a rat ‘scratching around’ by his feet, saying he could not see it well given how dark it was but that it was clearly a large rodent.
Then, at around 1.30am, he noticed it again, before he fell asleep and woke up as normal just before 6am.
When he went downstairs and checked on his wife in their living room, he then saw her covered in blood and small bites marks across her face.
He immediately called for the ambulance, which arrived at around 8.20am.
Pictures which have been shared with the permission of Mr Kirk show the extent of her injuries after the incident.
He said: ‘I’ve never seen anything like the injuries she had – you can see how bad they were from the pictures. It was absolutely savage.
‘I went and knocked on the door of the young girl over the road as she is also always up early and so she helped.
‘They took Diana to the Queen’s Medical Centre and she came back on Thursday night.
‘There were scratches on her face, her neck, her hands – it had tried to gnaw right through to the bone from the looks of it. There was blood everywhere.’
The next morning, after a neighbour had set up a trap in the house, Mr Kirk says the rat was caught and trapped in a cage.
As he moved it to the patio, Mr Kirk says the rat went to try to bite him multiple times. He says a neighbour then killed the rat, shooting it four times with a pellet gun before it eventually died.
‘Because of her condition, my wife can’t move,’ Mr Kirk continued.
‘I have since read that rats only ever go for young babies and people who are immobile in bed like my wife. She can’t feel pain so she would not have known much about what happened.
‘I would like people to know what can happen and to be aware of it. I found out a couple of days after it happened that it was making a nest in the house.’
