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Copperhead bites Gilmer teacher

By PHILLIP WILLIAMS

HOLLY LAKE — A Gilmer ISD kindergarten teacher was released from a Tyler hospital Monday (April 28), five days after a copperhead snake bit her twice outside her rural home at Holly Lake Ranch near Hawkins.

Julie York, wife of Gilmer High School athletic trainer/coach Steve York, said the reptile bit her right ankle and right index finger as she was going from her car to her home about 10 p.m. Wednesday. She was first admitted to ETMC-Gilmer hospital before being transferred by ambulance to East Texas Medical Center in Tyler Thursday morning, she said.

In a telephone interview Friday, Mrs. York said her yard only had landscape lighting, and that her two sons walked by the snake before “I felt like a stab (sensation) by my ankle.”

Believing someone had dropped something, she reached down to feel for it, and the reptile bit her finger, the teacher said.

Mrs. York’s husband emerged from the house and killed the snake with a golf club. The reptile, which Holly Lake Ranch security confirmed was a copperhead, was an estimated 2 1/2 to three feet long, said Mrs. York.

She said the second wound felt like a balloon with fire in it “trying to expand inside my finger,” because of the swelling and poison.

In another phone interview Monday evening, Mrs. York said neither she nor her husband “really panicked” when the incident occurred.

She said she was all right despite having swelling up to her armpit on her right arm. She said a physician will tell her May 7 when she can return to work at Gilmer Elementary School.

Mrs. York said Monday night she was among three snakebite victims treated at ETMC’s Tyler facility last week. She said her roommate there was a woman who was gardening at her Tyler home when a copperhead bit her through the glove on her right hand.

Holly Lake Ranch spokesman Aubrey Maddux said Friday Mrs. York’s incident was the “first poisonous snake bite that I’ve heard of” at the large rural housing development in his more than 20 years working there.

gilmermirror@gmail.com