An American teacher and his teenage son were killed by a swarm of hundreds of hornets while on a ziplining holiday in Laos.
Daniel Owen, 47, and his son Cooper, 15, died on October 15 while visiting an eco-adventure resort near the northern city of Luang Prabang.
Hundreds of what were believed to be Asian giant hornets attacked the couple as they tried to descend from a tree, a source close to two American diplomats in Laos said. The times.
Their bodies were “covered in red spots” after the “very, very painful” attack, Phanomsay Phakan, a doctor at the Phakan Arocavet clinic where the father and son were taken, told the newspaper.
“Many bites, more than a hundred, all over the body. I already thought it was a very dangerous situation because I had never seen anything as bad as that,” he said.
After the incident, father and son arrived at Phanak’s clinic conscious and showed no signs of anaphylactic shock, an allergic reaction that can kill people who have been stung by bees, wasps and hornets. However, they died a few hours later, after being transferred to the Luang Prabang provincial hospital.
Mr Owen was principal of the QSI International School in Haiphong, Vietnam, and is believed to have been on holiday in Laos.
The organization said it was “deeply saddened” to learn of the deaths of Mr Owen and his son.
“Dan dedicated 18 years to QSI, serving at five different schools and touching countless lives with his warmth, leadership and unwavering commitment to education,” it said in a Facebook post.
“He was deeply loved throughout our community and will be deeply missed. Our deepest condolences to the Owen family and all who knew and loved them.”
The Asian hornet can cause fatal stings
Dozens of people who knew the father and son through school, work and vacations flooded the comments of the post to pay tribute.
His former colleague Julija Zh wrote: “Dan was a wonderful director here in Minsk. He did a lot for a lot of people. We could always go and chat with him if we needed help and Dan did everything he could to help.
“We will also miss his son Cooper, it is still difficult to accept and even understand it all.”
Former student Anoushka Mahar said she will “never forget all the extra time and effort Mr. Owen put into me since I wanted to go to university, but confessed that I simply couldn’t afford a higher education.”
Josh Gaines added: “My first best friend when I went to Kazakhstan. We left positive quotes on each other’s boards every day. The world lost two good ones.”
Green Jungle Park, where the incident occurred, expressed its “deepest condolences” and said it had reviewed all existing procedures in a statement to The times. the independent has contacted the park for further comment.
The hornets reportedly attacked the father and son while they were climbing down a tree (file photo) (Getty Images/iStockphoto)
Asian giant hornets are the largest hornets in the world and are native to tropical parts of East Asia, South Asia, mainland Southeast Asia, and parts of the Russian Far East. In recent years they have spread to Western European countries, including the United Kingdom.
They are responsible for dozens of deaths each year due to the power of their 6mm stinger, which emits a particularly potent venom containing mastoparan-M, a toxin commonly found in wasp venom.
Last month in Spain, a man died after accidentally stepping on a wasp nest in the Galicia region. Two others died the same month.
Last year, the United States Department of Agriculture announced that the insect, also known as the “murder hornet,” had been eliminated from the country. It was declared eradicated in the United States five years after being first detected in Washington state, near the border with Canada.
A spokesman for the British Beekeepers Association, Ian Campbell, said The times that the danger of a hornet sting can vary from person to person, and that “there is no established threshold for the number of stings.”
the independent has contacted the US embassy in Laos for comment.