Prominent snake-handling pastor Jamie Coots, the star of National Geographic's Snake Salvation, died at his home in Middlesborough, Kentucky on Saturday after declining to seek medical treatment for a snakebite.
The Pentecostal pastor was bitten during church service on Saturday night while performing a snake-handling ritual. Paramedics received a 911 call at around 8:30 p.m. and rushed to the church shortly after. When they arrived found that Coots had already left. The paramedics then went to his house, but Coots refused treatment.
The crew returned about an hour later to find the pastor dead.
Coots has previously survived a snake bite that cost him the middle finger on his right hand. He let the affected portion of his finger rot off and gave it to his wife in a jar.
Coots is the member of Pentecostal church, whose followers practice snake handling. He believed a passage from the Bible indicates that the faithful cannot be harmed by venomous snake bites if they are anointed by god.
According to Mashable, this was the third time Coots suffered from a snake bite. In 1998 he was bitten by a viper and ultimately lost the middle finger on his right hand. The pastor had repeatedly emphasized that he would never seek medical treatment if he was bitten by one of his snakes.
In February 2014 Coots was sentenced to a year of probation after illegally crossing into Tennessee with venomous snakes. He was arrested in 2008 for keeping 74 snakes in his house.
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