Antoinette Webb picked up a shiny green beetle during a recent trip to Fort Knox State Park last week and within seconds she was fighting to breathe. The 44-year-old mother of 9-year-old twins, Ella and Jonah, said she felt burning through her body after touching what was later identified as a six-spotted tiger beetle.
“A berry green, [most] beautiful beetle I’ve ever seen. And I just picked him up and I said, ‘Whoa, you’re so pretty.’ And within seconds, I felt burning through my body,” Webb said. She ran up a grassy hill to the park’s gift shop with the children and collapsed in front of Dean Martin, the executive director of Friends of Fort Knox.
Martin said he saw Webb break out in hives, grab her throat, wheeze and shake. “She’s lying there and I’m holding her hand and I’m talking to 9-1-1 and I’m holding her,” he said. “She passes out because of a constricted airway, she’s got a lack of air. She’s got blue lips.” Martin and his wife, Sherry, helped Webb and soothed the twins while waiting for ambulance crews. Webb was given Benadryl before paramedics arrived, and later received four epinephrine shots at the hospital.
The beetle was identified as a non-venomous six-spotted tiger beetle, but the reaction it triggered was severe enough to send Webb into respiratory distress and make her pass out three separate times. The episode stands out because it was not a bite or sting that caused the crisis, but the handling of an insect in a public park — a rare and frightening kind of emergency that unfolded in front of Webb’s children.
Webb and her children returned to the scene 24 hours later and thanked Martin. “Because of you, they have their mom today,” she told him. Webb later said, “I just started crying, like right now. When I saw him, I immediately — I knew I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for him.” Martin said the moment has stayed with him. “It’s going to be like that every time,” he said.
Martin said he leaned on his experience as an Army medic while helping Webb, a detail that underscored how quickly a family outing turned into a life-or-death emergency. The antoinette webb fort knox story ended with survival, gratitude and a warning that even a harmless-looking beetle can set off a medical crisis in seconds.
