12-Foot Pet Python Killed After Biting Woman on Neck

A woman was bitten by a 12-foot-long pet python in her El Toro home Sunday but escaped serious injury when four friends managed to cut off the snake’s head and pry it from her neck.

The 26-year-old woman, identified only as Kathy, was taken to Saddleback Community Hospital in Laguna Hills. She was treated and released without serious injuries, hospital officials said.

Pythons are not poisonous and generally are not known to attack people, according to wildlife authorities. However, the friends who aided the El Toro woman are convinced she was in danger.

“If no one had been here, the snake definitely would have killed her,” said one of the friends who helped free the woman from the python. “The snake had such a hold on her she could never have gotten loose.”

The woman, however, disagreed. Speaking hours after the incident, she insisted that she could have freed the pet snake, named Monty, on her own without suffering serious injury. She added that she never feared the creature.

“He has been handled on a daily basis and was very friendly,” she said. “He just didn’t realize he was a big snake.”

The python belonged to a friend who had left it Sunday at the woman’s home. The 9-year-old snake had been around humans from the time it was a baby and was considered a harmless pet, friends said.

“None of us were ever afraid of Monty,” said a friend. “He’s never hurt anyone before.”

That was one reason why the woman thought nothing of throwing the snake across her shoulders about 3 p.m. to take it to another room for feeding, friends added.

Heard Screams

Suddenly, four men in another room heard her screaming and were horrified when they entered a bedroom to see the snake with its jaws wide open and its teeth sunk into the back of her neck.

“We grabbed at the snake and tried to pull it off her but we just couldn’t,” said Thomas Hines, 23, one of the four men. “Then one guy who had on leather gloves tried to pry its jaws loose but it was just impossible. So I yelled for someone to get me a knife.

“Kathy screamed at the men not to kill the snake because it was a pet, but I kept yelling ‘Get me a damned knife,’ ” Hines added. “First they brought a buck knife, and that couldn’t cut it. But someone got a second knife and I finally got the head cut off from its body.”

Rabbit Smells

Observers said they were convinced the snake attacked the woman because she had been handling rabbits, bought as food for the snake, and it picked up the rabbit scent from her.

“She was in shock, like a cold sweat, and terrified,” Hines said. “But she didn’t want us to kill that snake, no matter what.”

When paramedics finally arrived, some of the snake’s teeth were still embedded in the woman’s neck.

Lost Pythons

The woman and her friends had good reason to believe that the snake was harmless. Paul Schroeder, a dispatcher with the Orange County Animal Control office, said the agency often gets calls about lost pythons, indicating that quite a number of people own them as pets.

“I’ve never heard of one of them biting anyone though,” Schroeder said. “That really is a surprise.”

However, Los Angeles County fire officials said Sunday that a Canyon County woman was bitten on the hand by her pet python 11 months ago. The injury was not serious, officials said.