An East Texas woman is facing the uncomfortable prospect of rabies shots after a bat attack on a shopping trip. It happened Monday night at the Home Depot on East Loop 281 in Longview. Lakeshia Wiley had to be hospitalized after an incident when she was shopping for building materials.
"She was screaming out real loud, and I was screaming with her, and I ran to go get help," says Wiley's friend Angela Pippins.
Wiley was shopping for cinder blocks, and when she picked one up, she got a nasty surprise.
"She felt something crawl up her arm, and she swung and she said a rat! And I said no that's a bat," Pippins says.
Pippins was with Wiley at the time, and snapped a picture of the bat.
"She thought the bat had scratched her," Pippins says.
But she saw the distinctive bite mark on her arm. We spoke with Wiley today who says she began to get ill afterward and was taken to the hospital.
"Bats are considered high risk for carrying rabies; if you are bitten by one you should try to trap it, to be tested for rabies," says Longview animal control officer Jacqui Lynch.
Animal control officers were called in and 'a' bat was eventually caught. But not definitively, 'the bat'. Which means Wiley must undergo the painful round of rabies shots.
Home Depot told us that they've called in exterminators to deal with any outdoor pests that might enter the store. The bat has been sent for examination to determine whether it carried rabies.
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