Man recovering after being bitten by rattlesnake, suffering cardiac arrest

TORRINGTON, Conn. (WFSB/Gray News) - A man in Connecticut is recovering after he was bitten by a rattlesnake.

Joey Ricciadella considers himself an animal lover. When he saw a snake in the middle of the road on his way home, he wanted to stop and help it.

Grabbing a shirt from his back seat, he placed it over the snake’s head before picking it up to move it.

That’s when the snake bit him in the hand.

Brittany Hilmeyer, the mother of Ricciadella’s daughter, said she is used to his constant joking.

“It sounded like he was almost trying to make a funny voice like at first I thought he was messing with me,” Hilmeyer said.

However, when Ricciadella told her he had been bitten, it wasn’t a joke.

“He was getting to the point where he really couldn’t talk. You couldn’t understand him. It was like trying to talk to someone with a mouth full of marbles,” she said.

It turned out that the venom from the snake was starting to affect Ricciadella’s breathing.

Hilmeyer said she wasn’t surprised to hear he had gone out of his way to help a rattlesnake.

“He’s had a bat in his house with a broken wing at one point that he was trying to fix. Last week, there was a baby bunny,” she said.

Ricciadella was able to make it back to his car and drive himself to the nearest hospital in Torrington.

However, his respiratory system was failing, and he even went into cardiac arrest.

The only thing that could save Ricciadella was antivenom.

When he made it to Charlotte Hungerford Hospital, it was the shortage of antivenom that led to him being moved to Hartford Hospital.

“A lot of hospitals, I guess it’s not common to carry large amounts of antivenom. So that was part of the problem when he went to the first hospital,” Hilmeyer said. “The second hospital was having more flown in.”

Only two venomous snakes live in Connecticut. Those snakes are the Northern Copperhead and Timber rattlesnakes.

The Department of Energy and Environmental Protection said that anyone who encounters either species should observe it from a distance and calmly and slowly back away, allowing the snake to go on its own.

Bites from the Timber rattlesnakes can be fatal.

Ricciardella’s family said he’s been lucky and will spend at least one week recovering in the hospital.

“They’re waiting for the swelling to go down. Then he won’t be sedated so heavily anymore. That’s when he’ll be able to talk,” Hilmeyer said.

A GoFundMe was set up to help Ricciadella in his recovery.

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