At 2:07 PM Monday UC Berkeley junior Michael Ortega was assaulted and summarily digested by a 20-foot starfish.
Ortega was walking across Memorial Glade from the Bechtel Engineering center to meet friends at the Free Speech Movement Cafe when the large echinoderm lurched out from behind a bush, surrounding and immobilizing the unsuspecting Ortega.
After surrounding Ortega with its long, rough-skinned limbs and incapacitating him with its powerful tube feet, the starfish proceeded to force its stomach out of its centrally located mouth, quickly engulfing Ortega and muffling his screams of total abject terror, onlookers claim. In less then five minutes the starfish finished off Ortega, leaving behind only a bleached white skeleton and a pair of green Converse All-Stars. The starfish then disappeared into the eucalyptus grove before it could be apprehended, UCPD Chief Victoria Harrison said.
The starfish in question, an ochre star (Pisaster ochraceous), typically averages only a few inches in diameter.
