Two small boys, age 5 and 7, have been strangled to death in their sleep in New Brunswick, Cananda, by a massive python that escaped from a pet store below the apartment where the children were staying.
The pet store owner Jean-Claude Savoie says the creeping horror sneaked into the apartment in Campbellton, New Brunswick, through the ventilation ducts this morning and crawled into the ceiling.
It somehow punched a hole in the ceiling and dropped onto the small boys from above. It then coiled around them and crushed them as they slept together on the floor.
The size of the python is unknown, though pet shops in New Brunswick are allowed to sell snakes up to 10 feet in length. Two Ball Pythons are seen in this stock photo
Horror: The snake escaped from Reptile Ocean, a pet shop in the small city of Campbellton, New Brunswick. It crawled into an apartment above the store
The size of the snake was not immediately known, though a law passed in New Bruswick in 2009 allows pet stores to sell serpents nearly 10 feet long.
Some breeds of python can grow massive. The largest Burmese python ever captured in Florida, where the snake is an invasive species, measured 18 feet and weighed 128 pounds.
Mr Savoie, the owner of Reptile Ocean in Campbellton, described to Global News how he found the two boys dead in his apartment about 6.30am on Monday.
'I thought they were sleeping until I (saw) the hole in the ceiling. I turned the lights on and I (saw) this horrific scene,' he said.
'(The snake) went through a ventilation system. I don’t understand how it did it. It went through the ceiling... and the snake fell through the living room from the ceiling,' he said.
The snake is not usually handled by anyone in the store and Mr Savoie said he does not know how it escaped its cage in the pet shop.
Pythons hunt by using their powerful bodies to crush their prey to death
'My body is in shock. I don't know what to think,' he told Global News.
The two boys are the children of a friend of Mr Savoie who were having a sleepover at his apartment above the pet store.
The horrifying deaths of the two children shock residents of the small city of 7,400 in northern New Brunswick.
'It’s very nerve-wracking. If one got out, how many else got out,' neighbor Diane Fournier said.
Ms Fournier said that the young boys were fixtures in the neighborhood and often seen playing outside.
Police said an autopsy will confirm the exact cause of death, though officials believe the boys were crushed to death by the snake.
Mr Savoie said he captured the snake and turned it over to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who are examining the snake.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2385145/Python-strangles-2-boys-5-7-sleep-New-Brunswick-Canada.html#ixzz2b8aSCOMn
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