Suspected DUI crash led to bee attack

Police in Laurel County, Kentucky, say a car crash led to two people inside the vehicle being attacked by a swarm of bees from a disturbed hive. "I just had got done feeding my chickens, watering them and stuff, and I walked back to my house there to get my phone so I could play a video game on it," said Gary Lee Anderson, who lives on Patton Spur Road where the incident happened.



"And all of a sudden I heard a big 'boom,' and I looked back out my door and the electric pole fell and the lines were falling. And the GeoTracker was sideways into the fence." Then the people inside the car, who investigators identified as Noah Elkins, 36, of East Bernstadt, and Priscilla Simpson, 35, of Dry Ridge, got a big surprise. "He didn't know it, but he found out, that there was a hive of bees there," said Deputy Gilbert Acciardo with the Laurel County Sheriff's Office, "and he had disturbed them."

"And the guy came out, screaming and squalling, and running around about like a chicken with its head cut off," Anderson said. Then Anderson says they ran up the road, grabbed a hose outside his home and started trying to spray off the bees. "I told him, 'You need to get out of that water,'" Anderson said, "but I didn't know he was getting eat up by bees, I thought he was just high." Deputies say Elkins and Simpson were under the influence. Simpson told them that she and Elkins had taken several drugs, including Suboxone, neurotin and Klonopin.


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Investigators said they had driven down the road looking for a place to swim. "That girl in that little bikini, she had little red dots all over her," Anderson said. Even Anderson was stung while he was out there. Elkins and Simpson were taken to the hospital for treatment for injuries from the crash and for "numerous" bee stings, deputies said. Elkins was cited for driving under the influence, as well as other traffic violations. Simpson was charged with public intoxication. Investigators have called it an unusual case.