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Officials: Escaped pet python strangles Fla. child

OXFORD, Fla. — A 12-foot petBurmese python broke out of a terrarium and strangled a 2-year-old girl in her bedroom Wednesday at a central Florida home, authorities said. Shaunnia Hare was already dead when paramedics arrived at about 10 a.m., Lt. Bobby Caruthers of the Sumter County Sheriff’s Office said.

Charles Jason Darnell, the snake’s owner and the boyfriend of Shaunnia’s mother, discovered the snake missing from its terrarium and went to the girl’s room, where he found it on the girl and bite marks on her head, Caruthers said. Darnell, 32, stabbed the snake until he was able to pry the child away.

“The baby’s dead!” a sobbing caller from the house screamed to a 911 dispatcher in a recording. “Our stupid snake got out in the middle of the night and strangled the baby.”

Authorities did not identify the caller and removed the person’s name from the recording.

“She got out of the cage last night and got into the baby’s crib and strangled her to death,” the caller said.

Authorities removed the snake from the home Wednesday afternoon. Once outside the small, tan home, bordered by cow pastures, the snake was placed in a bag then inside a dog crate. The snake was still alive.

Darnell did not have a permit for the snake, which would be a second-degree misdemeanor, said Joy Hill, a spokeswoman with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. He has not been charged, but Caruthers said investigators were looking into whether there was child neglect or if any other laws were broken.

Hill said the snake will be placed with someone who has a permit, pending an investigation into the girl’s death.

The Humane Society of the United States said including Wednesday’s death, at least 12 people have been killed in the U.S. by pet pythons since 1980, including five children.

Burmese pythons are not native to Florida, but they easily survive in the state and can reach a length of 26 feet and weigh more than 200 pounds.

Some owners have freed pythons into the wild and a population of them has taken hold in the Everglades. One killed an alligator and then burst when it tried to eat it. Scientists also speculate a bevy of Burmese pythons escaped in 1992 from pet shops battered by Hurricane Andrew and have been reproducing since.

“It’s becoming more and more of a problem, perhaps no fault of the animal, more a fault of the human,” said Jorge Pino, a state wildlife commission spokesman. “People purchase these animals when they’re small. When they grow, they either can’t control them or release them.”

George Van Horn, owner of Reptile World Serpentarium in St. Cloud, said the strangulation could have occurred because the snake felt threatened or because it thought the child was food.

“They are always operating on instinct,” he said. “Even the largest person can become overpowered by a python.”

Oxford is about 50 miles northwest of Orlando.

Associated Press writers Matt Sedensky, Antonio Gonzalez and Lisa Orkin contributed to this report from Miami.

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I don’t think any responsible parent keeps an 18 foot python in an unlocked cage when there are children in the house.

Parents charged in python attack on 3-year-old son

Prosecutor cites cage disrepair, risks from snake in charging couple with abuse, neglect

By LAWRENCE MOWER
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

Police on Tuesday arrested the parents of a 3-year-old boy who last month was bitten and squeezed to the point of unconsciousness by an 18-foot python.

Melissa Melendrez, 25, and Anthony Melendrez, 26, are being charged with one count each of felony child abuse resulting in substantial bodily harm and felony child neglect in the Jan. 20 incident in their southwest valley apartment.

The charges stem from concerns authorities had over the cage housing the tiger reticulated python.

According to the couple’s arrest report, the door of the wood and fiberglass cage was being held together by duct tape and had “insufficient” latches with no locks.

At night, Anthony Melendrez would nail shut the door of the cage. Melissa Melendrez worried the snake might escape, according to the report.

The arrests contrast with how authorities dealt with previous animal attack cases, notably two last year in which pit bulls fatally mauled two young children. No one was charged in those cases because prosecutors felt they could not prove that the children were intentionally placed in harm’s way, as the state statutes require.

Clark County District Attorney David Roger said this case is different, partly because it involves a snake.

“We felt that under the circumstances, because the cage was in disrepair and because a python seems to be an inherently dangerous pet, that the abuse and neglect statute applied,” Roger said.

The couple’s youngest son had to be resuscitated by his mother after she stabbed the snake several times with a kitchen knife. The boy has fully recovered, and he and his 5-year-old brother are staying with Patty Robson, their grandmother.

Robson said Tuesday she was upset by the way authorities have handled her daughter’s case versus the cases of others involved in animal attacks. She said her grandson didn’t require any stitches and didn’t sustain internal injuries in the incident.

“There’ve been worse dog bites, and how many people keep a dog properly restrained?” Robson said. “It was a freak accident. It was just one of those things that wasn’t planned.”

The report doesn’t state how the snake, named Eve, escaped the cage. Eve had been in the home for four to six weeks, according to the arrest report.

Robson said the family had owned the snake before having a third party sell it to the Eden Gentlemen’s Club, on Valley View Boulevard near Spring Mountain Road. The person who bought the python then asked the couple to care for it while the club was being remodeled, Robson said.

But Robson said the man wouldn’t return phone calls when the family tried to return the snake.

Calls to the club have not been returned.

Melissa Melendrez told police that on the morning of the attack, she hadn’t touched the cage and didn’t know if it was secure. She went to the bathroom, and when she came out, her 3-year-old son was in the master bedroom. She could only see his feet, because the snake had flipped him upside down while coiling around him, according to the arrest report.

She then ran to the kitchen, grabbed a knife, and began stabbing the snake. Her son had “light brown stuff” coming from his mouth, and his face turned blue, the report states.

The snake then let go and, as Melissa Melendrez was performing CPR, started wrapping itself around her waist, according to the report.

The snake was euthanized because of the knife wounds it sustained. The boy was hospitalized overnight. Melissa Melendrez suffered bite marks on her hands. Anthony Melendrez was not home at the time.

Police noted in the arrest report that the family’s five other snakes, ranging in length from 3 feet to 11 feet, were kept in cages without locks.

Anthony Melendrez told police that once when Eve was shedding, she pressed against her cage and broke the door and window.

Robson praised her daughter’s response to the attack, but she didn’t know how to feel about the charges.

“I can understand why the charges are in place. No, I don’t feel that my daughter did anything wrong.”

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They shouldn’t really be in Florida at all, but now experts estimate there are up to 30,000 of them.  The huge 20 foot long, 200 pounds Burmese Pythons are eating a veritable smorgasbord of Floridian wildlife, including Alligatos. And they are possibly spreading out from just the Everglades… And they can, if they have the inkling, kill a person.

All so people could have them as pets!

“If you are standing in front of a large snake right now don’t panic…” 

So says the greeting message for the Florida Keys python hotline, 888-IVE-GOT1. Over the years enough pet Burmese pythons in south Florida have been released into the wild that one National Park Service scientist has estimated now there could be as many as 30,000 of them in the Everglades National Park area. (Between 1996 and 2006 about 99,000 were imported into the United States).

Burmese pythons can grow up to 20 feet long and weigh up to 200 pounds. Their appetite for local wildlife is endangering protected species that are vulnerable to any predators, especially ones as capable as the huge snakes. Research by the University of Florida identified the remains of the following wild Florida animals in the digestive tracts of the invading pythons: alligator, rabbit, two types of rats, domestic cat, cotton mouse, gray squirrel, fox squirrel, raccoon, oppossum, bobcat, muskrat, rice rat, white-tailed deer, Key Largo woodrat, and six species of birds. In 2006 it was discovered by scientists that pythons are breeding in Everglades National Park. A female can lay 80 eggs at a time.

Last year the Nature Conservancy started an Eyes and Ears community patrol using people like utility workers, mail carriers and police to prevent the large snakes from taking up residence in the Florida Keys. Special training is given to the volunteer groups. Members of the public can assist their efforts by calling sightings into the hotlines, and should never approach a python if they see one nearby. Pythons do not usually attack or eat humans, but it has happened. In 2008 a volunteer zookeeper was killed by a 10 foot constrictor in a cage.

The python invasion must be curtailed, or they could establish themselves in the Florida Keys and devastate the already fragile wildlife populations. About eight large adult pythons have already been spotted in the Keys, but currently it is thought they are not yet breeding there. Another major concern is that the huge predators will move throughout the Southern states and start decimating other native wildlife.

Senator Bill Nelson, a Democrat from Florida lamented up the python situation:
“If we do not take action now, we will let python populations in Florida continue to grow and further ravage the already-fragile Everglades, as well as risk letting them spread throughout the southern portion of the United States”.