A boy in Alabama has died only a few hours after being bitten by a poisonous spider, the Daily News reported on Wednesday.
Branson Riley Carlisle, 5, died in a hospital shortly after a brown recluse spider bit him on Sunday. His funeral was on Wednesday at Memory Hill Cemetery.
Jeff Stanford, the family's pastor, said that the Carlisle family was distraught over the sudden and unexpected death of their son.
A pest control management team does visit the house once a month, but the cold weather is said to have drawn the spiders inside, WHNT reported.
Brown recluse spiders can be dangerous, and their bites have caused casualties in the past. A 58-year-old woman died in Michigan after being bitten by a brown recluse spider in June.
First Betty Ann Strickland's foot started to hurt, then a few days later, she was unable to breathe. Though paramedics tried to resuscitate her for about 40 minutes, she died from her illness, CBS Local reported.
"Normally when people get bit by a spider, they get bit in a muscle or in a fatty tissue and my wife had been bitten in the blood vessel," said Strickland's husband, Charles. "The toxins were just circulating throughout her blood stream and it was infecting everything, all her organs, and he said it actually shut her whole system down, and that's what killed her."
