ORLANDO, Fla., July 14 (UPI) -- A pet python that strangled a Florida toddler in her crib apparently tried to eat the child, a jury in the trial of the child's mother and boyfriend heard.
Testifying in the manslaughter trial Jaren Hare, 21, and her live-in boyfriend, Charles "Jason" Darnell, 34, Deputy Chief Medical Examiner Wendy Lavezzi said the constrictor had coiled around the toddler's face and neck and asphyxiated her, the Orlando Sentinel reported Thursday.
"There were also several clusters of puncture wounds that represent bites from the snake as the snake was trying to ingest her, basically," Lavezzi said.
Hare and Darnell contend the July 1, 2009, death was an accident but prosecutors say the couple are criminally responsible for failing to keep the albino Burmese python caged.
A reptile expert described the glass aquarium from which the snake escaped as "totally incapable" of constraining a Burmese python.
"It has no structure, no lid on top," Gainesville-area snake-farmer Eugene Bessette said. "It has no way to secure the animal."
If convicted of manslaughter, third-degree murder and child neglect, Hare and Darnell could be sentenced to 35 years in prison.
