Snake kills two boys during sleepover

[Penny Lane 8,159]

The sleepover went horribly wrong.

Two boys, aged 5 and 7, were found dead Monday morning in an apartment above a pet store in a small Canadian town.

Their suspected killer is a python that reportedly weighs about 100 pounds.

Early indications suggest that a snake escaped its enclosure in the store, got into the ventilation system, then the apartment, and strangled the two boys, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said.

The owner of the pet store in Campbellton, New Brunswick, says he came upon an awful sight when he entered the living room where the boys were staying.

"I thought they were sleeping until I seen the hole in the ceiling. Everything had fallen. And I turned the lights on and I seen this horrific scene," Jean-Claude Savoie said in a phone interview with the Canadian website Global News.

Savoie said he believed the snake had fallen through the ceiling as it slithered through the ventilation system.

He said he located the reptile in a hole.

"I pinned him down and put him in a cage," he said.

Police say they now have the python in their possession. Autopsies on the boys' bodies will be performed Tuesday.

Canadian broadcaster CBC reported that the python is between 11 and nearly 15 feet long and weighs more than 99 pounds.

A neighbor, Diane Fournier, has lived on the same street as the pet store for 12 years. She described the deaths as "shocking."

"I knew the kids. They were brothers," she said. "They played in my yard with my dogs all of the time."

Fournier sent CNN a photograph her husband took of the pet store. It showed police cars, cones and yellow tape blocking off the area.

The store, Reptile Ocean Inc., offered condolences on its Facebook page Monday before the page was shut down.

A 1996 report by the animal protection charity Zoocheck and the World Society for the Protection of Animals listed Savoie as the owner of Reptile Ocean.

It described him then as "a young enthusiastic amateur collector who has only recently embarked on this commercial venture."

According to Global News, Savoie said that the two boys were the children of his best friend and that they often slept over at his apartment.

"I have so many mixed emotions right now it's ridiculous," he said. "I can't believe this is real."

http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/06/world/americas/canada-snake-deaths/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

Am I the only one who thinks this story doesn't make sense?

[Karee 4,190]

Am I the only one who thinks this story doesn't make sense?

Which part? The part about people that want pets that can suffocate them or swallow them whole?

[Penny Lane 8,159]

Which part? The part about people that want pets that can suffocate them or swallow them whole?

The actual events of the story.

So not only did someone clearly not lock the snake up properly, it also found its way into the ventilation system, all the way up to an apartment, made a huge hole in the ceiling (judging by the "everything had fallen" quote) .. and suffocated two children with nobody hearing a thing? That snake is apparently 100lbs. If 100lbs of anything fell through my ceiling, it would wake me up.

Plus, snakes do not simply suffocate things for fun.

They suffocate things to eat them.

The thought that the snake suffocated the children and then went back into the hole he came from? Bizarre.

Did the snake suffocate the kids at the same time? If not, how did one not manage to wake up and call for help?

Maybe I'm just a cynic, but I think the details don't make sense.

Edited August 6, 2013 by Penny Lane

[GandD 5,966]

How did the other kid not bail for help?

[Penny Lane 8,159]

How did the other kid not bail for help?

Right? Surely the fall woke the kids up. It caught both of them at the same time and strangled them both?

[Peikko 1,575]

It is very, very strange - I don't understand who's kids they are either, his best friend's kids often stayed in his living room? What?

[Dan and Judy 614]

maybe he molested them and had to silence them

[Peikko 1,575]

It is either a truly astonishingly bad luck story or there is more that will emerge. Either way, poor kids

[Jacque67 7,328]

A one-eyed snake?

[Darnell 8,478]

Am I the only one who thinks this story doesn't make sense?

Ya, seems lots of disconnected events there. Maybe the deaths were staged by a human, and the snake just a feckless scapegoat.

Edited August 7, 2013 by Darnell

[We Keep Receipts 9,238]

I can't make sense of it either. They must sleep like the dead in order not to hear what was going on.

[Karee 4,190]

I can't make sense of it either. They must sleep like the dead in order not to hear what was going on.

I bet the snakes were black.

[Jacque67 7,328]

I bet the snakes were black.

Definitely

[Teddy B 17,252]

I bet the snakes were black.

[We Keep Receipts 9,238]

I bet the snakes were black.

The 100-pound, 15-foot African rock python escaped from its enclosure in the apartment in the eastern Canadian town of Campbellton, where Noah Barthe, 4, and Connor Barthe, 6, were sound asleep Monday, Royal Mounted Police Sgt. Alain Tremblay said Tuesday.

Where's Al and Jesse when you need them!