Tragic accident or bad parenting?
 

Stories like this make my blood curdle with rage through complete irresponsible stupidity of the parents :evil:

A family has been left distraught after a huge pet snake escaped from its cage and strangled their young child.

Two-year-old Shaiunna Hare was already dead by the time a rescue crew arrived at her family home near Oxford, Florida, on Wednesday morning.

The family's pet Burmese python, measuring more than 8ft long, had broken out of its terrarium sometime during the night.

Charles Jason Darnell, the snake's owner and the boyfriend of Shaiunna's mother, discovered the snake missing and went to the girl's room, where he found "the snake on the child" and bite marks on her head.

Mr Darnell dialled emergency services pleading for help.

"Our Burmese python got out of the cage last night and got into the baby's crib and strangled her to death," a tearful Mr Darnell told the emergency operator.

The 32-year-old grabbed a knife and stabbed the albino snake until it loosened its crushing grip on the toddler.

Authorities later found the animal under furniture and removed it from their small home - bordered by cow fields - along with another six-foot snake.

Two other children and Shaiunna's mother, 23-year-old Jaren Ashley Hare, who were sleeping in the small tan-coloured bungalow, were not harmed.

Mr Darnell told deputies he placed the larger snake in a bag, which he put in an aquarium on Tuesday night and then discovered the snake had escaped when he woke on Wednesday morning.

"This is a very sad situation," Sumter County Sheriff Bill Farmer said.

"To keep a large, unsecured snake in the house is just asking for trouble."

Mr Darnell did not have a permit for the snakes and a vet is determining whether the reptiles should be put down.

Although no charges have been laid but investigators are looking into whether there was child neglect or if any other laws were broken.

By "reptiles", they mean the adults in the house that let this happen, right?

What an awful way for a child to die.

The parents should be prosecuted, plain and simple it's their fault.

further proof why some should have to obtain a qualification to become a parent

... or to have animals. "Huge pet snake"? :wtf: Such snakes belong in the wilderness, not in people's homes. :nuts: I know a lot of people who aren't even able to properly deal with a dog, a cat or a hamster, let alone a snake. Some people should neither have animals nor children.

its not fair that either snake should be put down, the one was innocent and the other was just doing what millions of years of evolution tell it to, hunt.

:twisted: I think they have to be once they start to look at their human friends as potential lunch.
Certain snakes don't make the perfect house pet at the best of times, but once the snake has decided humans are prey, there's no way you can keep them.

A simalar thing happened to Jo's sisters friend.
The snake used to sleep next to her in bed :nuts:
Then the snake went off it's food.
She took the snake to the vets, and when she came back a few hours later she was told they had put the snake down (didn't wait for her permission).
The vet told her that when the snake had been lying next to her at night, it had been meassuruing it's body next to hers, and it had been off it's food because it was starving itself so it could eat her :shock:

Snakes = not good house pets.


Anyone with children should be very selective when deciding on what pets are suitable in the home.

I went on a fire awareness training course today. One main element of the course was the difference between risk and hazard - risk can be minimised (or removed) by removing the hazard (his example was bengal tigers...they are a hazard but are not a risk in Tameside as Tameside has a zero population figure for bengal tigers).

Bringing a bloody great big python into your house is one BIG risk!

Dangerous enough for adults whose choice it is to have the animal in the house.

Neil I've heard that happening to people before where snakes lay down next to their owner in bed.

its like one of the oldest urban legands, lol. its always a friend of a friend or such.

Couldn't agree more. You'd have thought science by now would have advanced enough to chemically steralise individuals until they pass a certain level of IQ, then given a pill to make them fertile again when they're ready for kids.

Yes, it's also listed in almost identical words on Snopes, where they point out that snakes don't measure their potential victims .. indeed they'd starve if they put that much preparation into eating as animals don't normally lie there waiting for the snake to measure them up :)

However, I agree with those who say that it's the height of idiotic irresponsibility to try to keep a python in the same house as a child. A tragedy for the child in this case .. but truly awful parenting.

I never understand why people want to keep wild anmals in the home anyway .. they're better off in the wild imo .. one reason cats and dogs are referred to as "domesticated" animals .. (and some of the latter don't belong in a home with children imo .. pit bulls for eg.)

But interesting that Helen referred to tigers .. apparently there are more tigers in the USA than there are living in the wild now .. and most of them are in private homes in Texas! I'm glad that in Sheffield, as in Thameside, tigers have a zero population.

Caryl

to me the parents ain't got no common sense, if they got small kids that age surely wouldn't they have got rid of the snake especially if its dangerous like that :shrug: but then again some people ain't got sense these days

yay, the snakes been aquitted. neither will face the death penalty!!!

but what about the parents??

I heard/read/saw somewhere that they should have had a license for the python, which they had failed to obtain.

If they can't be arsed getting the qualification to keep a snake, they're hardly likely to go and sit the parenting test.

Numbnuts. :evil: