Athlete Bit by Snake Goes for a Run, Dies

A field hockey player has died after being bitten by a venomous king brown snake in Australia's tropical north and proceeding to go for a training run. Karl Berry, 26, was cleaning up around an athletic facility in Darwin on Tuesday when he picked up a snake, thinking it was a non-venomous python, and threw it into bushes, say local newspaper reports. Berry, captain of the Commerce-Pints hockey team, was bitten on the hand but did not realize the bite was poisonous and embarked on his run.

He later collapsed, and an ambulance manager says Berry was conscious when paramedics arrived—but took up to 15 minutes to mention he had been bitten by a snake. He died Wednesday. "He had gone for a two-kilometer run, which pumped the venom around his system much faster," says the ambulance official. (More snake stories.)