A two-year-old US girl is dead after being strangled by a 3.6m pet python which escaped from its enclosure and slithered into her crib.
Paramedics rushed to Shaiunna Hare's central Florida home yesterday but she was already dead after being bitten on the head, FOX News reports.
PHOTOS: When animals attack
Her mother Jaren Ashley Hare's live-in boyfriend Charles Jason Darnell owned the Burmese python and police say he may be charged because he did not have the $100 permit required to keep the snake as a pet.
Mr Darnell told authorities he put the albino Burmese python — which can grow to 8m in length and weigh 90kg — inside a bag in its aquarium on Tuesday night.
But when he woke the next morning, Mr Darnell found it wrapped around Shaiunna in her crib.
Mr Darnell stabbed the snake repeatedly to try and make it let Shaiunna go but it had already bitten her on the head, he said.
Authorities were later pictured removing the snake from the girl's home.
The reptile was wounded but still alive.
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