Jeffrey Leon O'Keefe, a 22-year-old stonemason, pleaded guilty to a charge of public nuisance and a second offence of the improper transporting of wildlife. Police prosecutor Sergeant Greg Mobbs said the woman was driving along Palmerston St with her children when she saw O'Keefe's vehicle begin to pull out from the kerb.
She honked her horn to warn him, and continued on her way, but O'Keefe took exception to the incident and followed her. He pulled alongside the woman at an intersection, and racially abused her, calling her a `black bitch'. The woman was upset by O'Keefe's confrontation so she followed O'Keefe to get his registration number.
But when she pulled over to write it down, O'Keefe stopped a little way down the road. When he jumped out of his vehicle and started running towards the woman, he was holding a metre-long snake in his hands, yelling: `This a death adder and you're dead'.
The woman told police she had been terrified and her children were screaming to have the windows wound up, so she drove off immediately. When police traced O'Keefe through his registration to his Nathan St, Vincent address, they found four pythons at his home.
He admitted to police that he had racially abused the woman, and had threatened her with the snake, which was in fact a Bredl's python, only telling her it was a death adder to frighten her. Asked why he had the snake in his vehicle, he said he often took it for a drive. That admission brought about the second charge, because the law states that the only two reasons snakes can be transported in public is to visit the vets, or when moving house. Magistrate Laurie Verra fined O'Keefe $400 for threatening the woman and her children, and a further $800 for having the snake in his vehicle.
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