Man admits to drunkenly buying snake

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COVENTRY, England, March 26 (UPI) -- A British man who woke up after a drunken night to find he had purchased a 10-foot python pleaded guilty to receiving stolen goods.

Richard Baker, an attorney for Dwayne Matthews, 29, told the court in Coventry, England, his client and his friends had been drinking heavily when a stranger offered to sell Matthews the snake Jan. 11, The Mirror reported Tuesday.

"In his wisdom, and no doubt egged on by his inebriated friends, he decided it would be a good idea to buy it and sell it," he said. "The next morning he realized it hadn't been such a good idea.

"He got up to find one of his friends asleep on the sofa and this snake rearing up at him in an S-shape, its jaws open like a cobra. Instead of running out of the house, as some would have done, and leaving his friend to his fate, he apprehended this snake. He ran upstairs, got a quilt and threw it over the snake to subdue it and put it in a tank. It was like a sub-plot from a Guy Ritchie film," Baker said.

The python, which had been stolen along with eight others earlier in January, was returned to its owner.

Matthews, who was arrested after attempting to sell the snake, pleaded guilty to receiving stolen goods and was sentenced to an eight-week suspended prison sentence and ordered to pay $129 in court costs and $121 in damages to the victim.