Python Kills Two Children

In Campbellton, New Brunswick, a pet snake escaped, then apparently crawled through the ventilation system and into a living room. There it killed two children--Noah Barthe, 5, and his brother Connor, 7. An RCMP spokesperson said they were "strangled," but probably the mode of death was asphyxiation by constriction. That, at least, has been the cause of death in other cases of large constrictors killing humans. Such incidents are rare; the victims are almost always either the owners of pet snakes or their children. Though the snake involved here was kept in a pet store, it was actually the private pet of the owner. He was the best friend of the children's father, and the children were sleeping over with his son at his apartment above the store. After discovering the children's bodies, the owner found and captured the snake. He turned it over to police. His own son was sleeping in a different room and was not harmed.



The motive in such attacks appears to be predation but, as in this case, the snake does not actually consume the victim. As mentioned in The Book of Deadly Animals, the snake will examine its killed prey carefully before consuming it. It is at this point that the snake apparently finds something about humans unpalatable. Tales of predation on humans in the wild are common but polluted with folklore, though a couple of scientific publications in recent years support the idea that reticulate pythons may prey on humans. 





This snake was an African rock python weighing 45 kilograms (99 pounds) and measuring between 3.5 and 4.5 meters (roughly 11 and a half to fifteen feet). A much smaller member of this species killed three-year-old Jesse Lee Altom in Centralia, Illinois, in 1999, as he slept between two adults. 




Related Post: Rock Python Trapped in Fence



Thanks to D'Arcy for the news tip.