Toxicology reports have shown a man who died after being bitten by a snake near Mackay in Queensland on Saturday didn't have any venom in his system.
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00:00 The preliminary investigation, we've had a statement from the family come out and say
00:05 that there was no venom in Donald Morrison's system.
00:09 What we know is that Mr. Morrison was attending a 100 year anniversary at the Kamala State
00:14 School about an hour south of Mackay on Saturday night and we know that he was bitten by a
00:18 snake as he was trying to uncoil it from his friend's leg.
00:22 It was initially believed that he had died from this snake bite.
00:25 The toxicology report released or stated by the family has shown that there was no venom
00:31 in Mr. Morrison's system.
00:33 While we don't actually know the exact cause of Mr. Morrison's death at this stage, we
00:39 do know investigations are pointing to the fact that a snake bite wasn't even a contributing
00:43 factor to this and it may have actually just been an underlying medical condition that
00:47 Mr. Morrison was unaware of.
00:49 Earlier this week we spoke to a local snake catcher and the Queensland Ambulance Service
00:53 and they pointed to dry bites which are basically a snake bite that injects no actual venom.
01:00 With this, this is actually quite common in the sense that a dry bite is about 80 to 90
01:05 percent of the time.
01:06 Now it appears that this is actually what might have happened for both Mr. Morrison
01:10 and the friend he was trying to rescue.
01:13 The 65 year old man who had the snake coiled on his leg initially was released from hospital
01:18 on Sunday and is expected to make a good recovery but reports show that he also had no venom.
01:23 venom in his system.
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