Comedy of terrors during killer bee attack

By Mitzi Brabb
Gazette Correspondent
It was just another day for 17 year old Skylar Dineen-Johnson. The high school senior was doing homework when she heard her two dogs crying wildly outside, desperately pawing at the door.

Dineen-Johnson ran to the door and realized her dogs were being attacked by bees. She ran to her room, threw on some jeans and a hooded pullover sweatshirt and rushed out to rescue her dogs.

But as soon as she opened the door and stepped outside it was as if she were stepping into a terrifying Steven King novel. A swarm of bees immediately attacked her.

She yelled to her 11-year-old brother, who was in the house watching TV. “Help me! Help me! Call 911.”

Dineen-Johnson ran up and down her upper Round Valley neighborhood screaming for help. She stopped, dropped and rolled, she got up and ran again, she screamed some more, but the swarm kept coming.

One of the neighbors saw her and called 911, but the operator told him that Round Valley wasn't in their jurisdiction and he should call the sheriff’s office.

Within five minutes, all her neighbors heard her blood-curdling screams and her parents, who were just up the road, came rushing home.

Finally, a hero arrived! A neighbor arrived at the scene with a man who had come up from the Valley to give chiropractic care to her horse. Clell Husher did not hesitate. He immediately ripped off his shirt and began hitting the bees off the young victim.

By then her mother was also yanking bees off her daughter. Her father rushed to the truck to find something to help remove the bees, but he never made it back out of the vehicle; not for at least another hour as a horde of angry bees turned on the truck and began smashing into the glass and swarming the entire vehicle.

About that time another neighbor, Mick Umbenhauer, arrived, apologizing profusely for unleashing the bees by removing a cover from his well. He told the family that he was checking to see how dry the well was, and when he removed the wooden lid he was surprised to see rows of yellow. That’s when the attack began. The man escaped to his truck after suffering some 50 stings. The bees then apparently became attracted to the noise of his neighbor’s barking dogs.

Finally, about 10 minutes after the nightmare began, an ambulance and a fire truck arrived. They loaded Dineen-Johnson into the ambulance and put an oxygen mask on her face.

When all the emergency care professionals had left, Christopher Johnson was still trapped in his truck. The young boy was still alone in the house, and other victims, such as Umbenhauer, had not been treated.

Amanda Johnson, the mother of Dineen-Johnson, says she begged a firewoman to do something about the bees still attacking her husband’s truck.

“You have to call poison control; we’re not going to help you,” she reportedly responded.

“My son was on the phone with 911 for an hour and a half. The woman kept him calm, because he was so frightened and didn’t know what was going on,” Johnson added.

Dineen-Johnson was transported to Payson Regional Medical Center.

“We were still killing bees in the emergency room,” the girl said.

She was later flown to Phoenix, where she was treated and then released after two days in ICU at Banner Health. She had upwards of 300 stingers removed from her scalp alone, and another 100 from the rest of her body. The crazed Africanized (or “killer”) honeybees had gotten underneath her clothes and had stung her in her ears, her mouth, and eyes as well.

Back at the house, neither the sheriff nor any other emergency personnel had shown up to rescue the boy or his father. Once again, it was the neighbors who came to the rescue.

Joe and Tiffany Wanderer arrived with a fire extinguisher and began battling the bees until they could safely remove the boy as well as his father.

Dineen-Johnson had suffered the most horrific experience of her life, and the aftermath of the attack brought additional devastating news. Her two beloved dogs had both died from the terrorizing attack.

Cubby, her Maltese Yorkie, died at the scene. The family’s Queensland Heeler, Jake, was rushed to Payson Pet Care where she received two days of excellent care. However, 500 bee stings were just too much. Jake got to see his family one last time before he died.

A week after the attack, Dineen-Johnson was still pulling stingers out of her skin and had to be taken to an eye doctor for an emergency procedure. One remaining stinger had worked its way through her eyelid and was scratching the surface of her eye. Dr. Troy Ford removed the embedded stinger at no charge.

Although Amanda Johnson is grateful to all her neighbors who helped, she is disgusted by the way everything else was handled. She called the Payson Fire Department to complain about how rude one of their employees had been. The employee denied the accusation, but Fire Chief Marty DeMasi assured Johnson that proper protocol had not practiced.

Julie Ballard, a veteran paramedic said, “The assaulting agent (bees) should have been removed from the victim before she left the scene. Also, the child should not have been left alone in the house, and it was unethical to leave the husband in a truck that was still under attack.”

Johnson was also upset about how the media handled the situation. A week after the incident happened, the Payson Roundup came out with its own version of the story.

“Almost all of it was wrong,” Dineen-Johnson said. “No one from the paper even bothered to talk to us about it. They didn‘t even get my name right,” she added.

The Roundup story gave brief mention about the incident and the deaths of the dogs before veering off on the topic of disappearing honey bees.

“People don’t need to know about where the honey bees are going right now as much as they need to know that there are Africanized bees within the community attacking people,” said Johnson.

“People need to be warned and need to be prepared for such an attack.”

There are many sources of information available online. One, www.utahcountybeekeepers.org, can help you prepare for this kind of situation. Suggestions include running inside and directly into the shower. They also recommend running, and covering yourself as much as possible. They advise against making loud noises or jumping into a pool of water because the persistent bees will wait.

Although the incident in Round Valley was unexpected and the bees should soon be migrating towards a warmer climate, Johnson warns that everyone should be prepared.