Archives of The Cold Blooded News

The Newsletter of the Colorado Herpetological Society

Volume 29, Number 3;   March, 2002

Aurora Man Strangled By Pet Python

by Jim Kirksey

Other reports indicated that the man was cleaning the snake's cage, and had draped the snake around his neck while he worked. Apparently, the snake clamped down on his carotid artery, obstructing the flow of blood to his brain and causing him to pass out. When he fell to the floor, the snake presumably wrapped around his windpipe, suffocating him. It was only after he fell that the woman with him realized he was in trouble, but, with the man lying on the floor, was unable to remove the snake by herself.

A snake that large should never be handled by one person alone, and should never be allowed to wrap around a person's neck In this case, the first rule was followed, but not the second, with tragic results.

Regrettably, the snake was later euthanized by the Aurora Animal Shelter.

Daluz and Stark used their police batons for leverage to pull the reptile away from the man's neck, but it took reinforcements from the Aurora Fire Department to peel the pet off the man.

The snake was about 8 inches in diameter, Daluz said. Fire Lt. Dave Varnum said it took seven men to unwrap the 8-to-10-foot-long, 60- to 80-pound python from around its owner, and firefighter Sigfried Kline wrestled it back into its cage.

Varnum said it isn't clear why the reptile attacked its owner, who had raised it from a small snake to its present size. It didn't appear to be hungry and it wasn't shedding its skin - two times when snakes tend to be more aggressive, Varnum said. Two women who also live in the house found the man with the snake around his neck, but they were unable to unravel it, so they called 911, Varnum said.

Jay Larson, who lives across the street, identified the victim as Rick Barber and said he has known him for about a dozen years. Larson said an ambulance technician on the scene told him the victim had no pulse when they arrived, but they had managed to restore it before taking him to the Medical Center of Aurora. He was pronounced dead of asphyxiation in the hospital's emergency room, hospital spokeswoman Bev Petry said.

"He probably was the nicest man in the neighborhood," Larson said. "He would do anything for you. Nobody would talk bad about him around here." Larson said he has petted the python many times in the past, and he described it as docile.

Aurora Animal Control took custody of the large python. Varnum said it is illegal to have a snake over 10 feet long in Colorado, and in Aurora it is illegal to have one over 6 feet long.