New bride’s harrowing death as she’s killed by hippo who ‘bit out her heart’ while on honeymoon
WARNING: DISTRESSING CONTENT The devastated husband had to fly back from his honeymoon without his wife just two weeks after getting married
The couple went on a guided tour of Eagle Island but had to take a detour because a herd of elephants blocked their path (stock)
A couple of newlyweds faced a tragic fate when they were surprised by a hippopotamus attack that took the wife’s life in front of her husband in the Botswana Delta.
Janice and Bruce Simpson had been married for only two weeks when they went on a guided canoe tour at Eagle Island in the Okavango Delta in 2003.
It is reported that during the journey, the trio had to stop because a herd of elephants was on their way. After a while waiting for them to move, the guide decided to give up and take a different route – one through the nearby reeds.
Accounts provided by the couple’s family explain that some 200 metres away from their camp, a hippo ploughed into the centre of the boat the three were on, causing them to fall into the water.
Bruce dislocated his shoulder in the fall and managed to get back up just in time to find that the animal had closed its jaws on the 32-year-old woman’s chest, biting through her heart and lung.
A drought was affecting the animals’ behaviour at the Botswana Delta at the time, said the husband of a second victim
Then the devastated husband waited with his wife while the guide went to seek help, but Janice had already passed away.
Bruce accompanied his wife’s body from Botswana back to South Africa, where the couple lived.
Janice’s sister, Lauren Salters, reminisced on the woman’s final days, telling IOL: “They got married at Zevenwacht wine estate on November 29. The next Thursday, they left for Maun, Botswana, for their honeymoon.”
She explained the couple had met while working together and “were absolutely besotted with each other.” She also described her sister as a “vibrant, bubbly person – so full of fun.”
Weeks later, another woman was attacked by the same kind of animal, also in the Botswana Delta.
Diana Tilden-Davis, who survived a hippo attack weeks after the couple’s accident(Image: AFP/Getty Images)
A former Miss South Africa pageant winner, Diana Tilden-Davis, ran a safari company in the area with her husband, Chris Kruger.
One day, while paddling a mekorro (dugout canoe) in the remote northern reaches of the same Delta as the Simpson couple, Diana accidentally surprised a hippo that was in the channel.
Her husband explained in a statement that the hippo then bit Diana in the lower leg, right above the ankle, but she was rescued and air-lifted to Milpark Hospital in Johannesburg, where she received medical treatment.
He also provided an explanation about why the local animals might have been behaving more violently at the time: “There is a severe drought in Botswana at the moment, and all the grazing animals, including hippo, are quite stressed because of the lack of grazing grass.
“This factor, together with the fact that the waters are normally low this time of the year, giving the hippo less chance to move away from human activity into deeper waters, could be one of the reasons why this hippo was so aggressive.”
