Python Strangles 2-Year-Old Central Florida Girl

Just looked at one of our local news websites who has copied an article from another website... they title it "Killer Python" wtf... heres the article.. until otherwise I say its the owner's/parent's neglect in this entire situation...


http://www.wtkr.com/news/nationworld...,5240763.story


Killer python tried to eat toddler, deputy medical examiner testifies
By Stephen Hudak, Orlando Sentinel

4:56 a.m. EDT, July 14, 2011

BUSHNELL — The pet python that strangled a 2-year-old toddler in her crib apparently tried to eat the child, a deputy medical examiner said Wednesday as testimony concluded in the unusual manslaughter trial.

The six-member jury is expected to begin deliberating Thursday after closing arguments.

Defense lawyers for the toddler's mother, Jaren Hare, 21, and the mom's live-in boyfriend, Charles "Jason" Darnell, 34, contend the child's death was a terrible but unpredictable accident, while prosecutors say the couple ought to be held criminally responsible for failing to keep the albino Burmese python caged.


Neither Hare nor Darnell testified or offered their own witnesses. They also ignored questions shouted at them by reporters as they left the courthouse together through a back door with a deputy sheriff as an escort. If convicted of manslaughter, third-degree murder and child neglect, the couple could be sentenced to 35 years in prison. They rejected a pretrial plea agreement that could have put each in prison for up to 10 years.

The tragedy occurred July 1, 2009, in the couple's small home in Oxford, 60 miles northwest of Orlando.

Assistant State Attorney Pete Magrino wrapped up the prosecution with deputy chief medical examiner Wendy Lavezzi, who decided the constrictor had coiled around Shaianna's face and neck and asphyxiated her.

"There were also several clusters of puncture wounds … that represent bites from the snake as the snake was trying to ingest her, basically," Lavezzi told grim-faced jurors who viewed post-mortem photos of the child.

The bite marks were on the crown of her head, her forehead, her cheek, around her mouth and her arms.

Magrino also displayed the girl's post-attack pictures to a snake expert as a counterpoint to defense arguments that the pet snake, which Hare bought for $200 at a flea market about seven years ago, was tame.

"Is that evidence of a snake being gentle?" he asked.

Testifying as an expert, Gainesville-area snake-farmer Eugene Bessette, who produces the reptiles for the global pet market, research and zoos, said a healthy female 5-year-old Burmese python like Hare's should measure about 15 feet in length and weigh about 150 pounds. Gypsy, as Hare had named the pet snake, was measured at 8 feet 6 inches and 13.5 pounds after the attack. Bessette termed her very thin, "almost unhealthy."

He said those depressed dimensions suggest a python that was "very, very underfed, undernourished." He said a healthy, well-fed python would grow from the size of a hot dog at birth to Gypsy's size in a year.

In the wild, the snake would be "very opportunistic," he said. "It would eat what it could find."

Bessette, who has 6,000 live snakes or serpent eggs incubating at his warehouse farm in Archer, described the glass aquarium from which Gypsy had escaped as "totally … incapable" of sheltering a Burmese python.

"It has no structure, no lid on top," he said. "It has no way to secure the animal."

The snake, which had not been fed since a meal of road-kill squirrel about a month before the attack, had escaped repeatedly from its tank, a 200-gallon aquarium with a quilt flopped over the top. Darnell found it slithering down the hallway of the manufactured home a few hours before Shaianna was killed, gathered it up, slipped it into a mesh laundry bag, tightened the strings and returned the snake to its tank.

But the laundry bag had a baseball-size hole in its side, and the snake had previously escaped from it.

Hare then heard her toddler cry about 1 a.m. and fetched the child a sippy cup of milk before going back to bed, according to transcripts of her interview with deputies. She and Darnell said they never heard Shaianna cry again.

The snake tank was situated about 12 feet from the toddler's room, which did not have a door.

The snake remains in the custody of the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission. Hare, who was about eight months pregnant with Darnell's child at the time, gave birth in August 2009 and has custody of the girl.

Darnell's two children, ages 12 and 7 at the time, were visiting at the time of the attack and asleep in the room with the snake tank. Their mother has custody of them.

shudak@tribune.com or 352-742-5930




Photo of quilted snake aquarium and the baby's crib shown at killer python trial in Sumter County

Originally Posted by wcreptiles

The snake weighed < 13 pounds in news reports when the event occured. Didn't anyone take notes?

Well it has been eating for 2 yrs now. This must be the current size, which sounds better from a news point of view.

Well, they've been convicted now. Can't wait to hear what the sentencing is. Some of the defense attorney's comments were laughable. One comment was that it was all an accident and the defendant is only guilty of loving snakes, not dogs.

Loved it enough to starve it into eating his girlfriend's child? I was at the Wal-Mart in Bushnell tonight - plenty of look alikes for this pair in there...

They were sentenced today to 12 years in prison and 5 years of probation per referenced thread.

http://www.faunaclassifieds.com/foru...d.php?t=267429

Their lawyer was on HLN this morning saying they didn't get a fair trial because the Florida jury wanted a conviction after Casey Anthony was freed. She wants the conviction overturned.

Noelle

One of the many articles on the trial outcome.

Python Strangling Case: Jaren Hare and Jason Darnell sentenced to 12 years in prison each for child's death

6:10 PM, Aug 24, 2011

BUSHNELL, Florida -- A central Florida couple has been sentenced to 12 years in prison each for the death of the woman's toddler, who was strangled in her crib by a pet python.
Photo Gallery: Python kills Florida toddler

A Sumter County judge sentenced 21-year-old mother Jaren Hare and her live-in boyfriend, 34-year-old Charles "Jason" Darnell, on Wednesday. They were both convicted last month of manslaughter, third-degree murder and child neglect. Both previously rejected plea agreements for 10 years in prison.

Documents show the couple had not fed the eight-and-a-half-foot albino Burmese python for a month before the incident, and the python had escaped repeatedly from its tank in their home in the Sumter County town of Oxford.

Darnell told detectives the snake was in its tank when he went to bed on June 30th, 2009. An hour later, he found the python in the hallway, so he stuffed it into a mesh bag and put it back into its tank.

Darnell told investigators he found the snake coiled around the head of 2-year-old Shaiunna Hare the next morning.

The toddler had been bitten in the forehead, but pythons are not venomous; investigators say the girl died from strangulation.

According to a Department of Children and Families report, both Darnell and Jaren Hare had tested positive for drugs two months before the girl's death.

Detectives also found Darnell did not have a permit to own the python, which was named Gypsy.

Defense attorneys argued that the death was an accident, and there was no way to know that the tame pet would kill a child.

10 News and The Associated Press

http://www.wtsp.com/news/local/artic...hon-strangling

IMHO, that is about ¼ of what they should have gotten. I still fully believe that snake was used as a cover up for what really happened. I mean, think about it. how hard would it be to force the snakes mouth open and put bite marks on the childs forehead?

I just really don't believe for a minute that the skinny ass 7 ft burm in the original video, is actually stupid enough to think it could consume that toddler, no matter how hungry it might have been. They may attempt a meal 2 or maybe even 3 times their girth, but 4 times as wide or more? They just aren't that stupid of an animal.

But on the bright side I guess, at least we have a couple losers out of society for a while.

Originally Posted by crotalusadamanteus

IMHO, that is about ¼ of what they should have gotten. I still fully believe that snake was used as a cover up for what really happened. I mean, think about it. how hard would it be to force the snakes mouth open and put bite marks on the childs forehead?

I just really don't believe for a minute that the skinny ass 7 ft burm in the original video, is actually stupid enough to think it could consume that toddler, no matter how hungry it might have been. They may attempt a meal 2 or maybe even 3 times their girth, but 4 times as wide or more? They just aren't that stupid of an animal.

But on the bright side I guess, at least we have a couple losers out of society for a while.

Note that the article states investigators and not mortician.

And I fully support the idea that a snake in that condition would in no way consider a toddler a meal. An autopsy should show whether or not the bites were post/pre-mortem. I've actually been waiting for the autopsy, but havent seen or heard of the actual report.

They shoulda got first degree and animal cruelty for trying to frame the burm. Atleast here in Florida we can still give them the chair.

All you have to do is see a snake take a large meal to know there would have been NUMEROUS bite marks if the snake actually did attempt to consume the child, from the many tries it would take to get it right.