Woman found dead with python around neck in US snake house

A
36-year-old woman has been found dead with a python wrapped around her neck in
a home in the midwestern US state of Indiana which housed around 140 snakes,
police said.

The body of
Laura Hurst was discovered on Wednesday in the house in Oxford, Sergeant Kim
Riley, a state police spokesman, said in a statement.

Hurst, of
Battle Ground, Indiana, had an eight-foot (2.4-meter) reticulated python
wrapped around her neck.

Medics
attempted to revive her but their efforts were unsuccessful.

“She appears
to have been choked by the snake,” Riley told the Lafayette Journal &
Courier newspaper. “We do not know that for a fact until after the autopsy.”
The home with the snake collection was owned by the Benton County sheriff, Don
Munson, who lived next door, the Journal & Courier said, and Hurst kept
about 20 of her own snakes there.

Munson, who
found Hurst’s body, told the newspaper that her death appeared to be a tragic
accident. Pythons are a non-venomous family of snakes found in Africa, Asia,
and Australia that encompasses more than 30 species, including some of the
largest snakes in the world.

They
typically grasp prey with sharp, backward-curving teeth before squeezing them
tightly to induce a heart attack.