Man's stolen python nearly ate friend

A man ended up in court after buying a 15ft stolen python during a drinking session. Hungover Dwayne Matthews, 29, awoke the next morning to find the huge snake “rearing up with it’s jaws open” ready to pounce on his friend who was asleep on the sofa. Matthews had bought the 14kg beast, called Bruce, the night before from a traveller with the intention of selling it on to fund his new guttering business. A court heard Matthews woke up on January 11 to find the python rearing up in an S-shape about to sink its fangs into his friend.

Matthews managed to throw a blanket over the snake before bundling it into a glass cage. The next day he tried to sell the giant African rock snake to a local reptile shop who called police when they became suspicious. Matthews was handed an eight week prison sentence suspended for two years when he admitted receiving stolen goods at Coventry Magistrates Court last Friday. The court heard the python had been stolen along with eight others from an out-house in Hillfields, Coventry. Richard Baker, defending, told JPs: “Mr Matthews was drinking at a house in Willenhall with friends. A van pulled up and a traveller offered for sale this 10 to 15ft-long rock snake.



“In his wisdom, and no doubt egged on by his inebriated friends, he decided it would be a good idea to buy it and sell it. The next morning he realised it hadn’t been such a good idea. He got up, went into the lounge, where the snake was being kept, to find one of his friends asleep on the sofa and this snake rearing up at him in an S-shape, its jaws open like a cobra. Instead of running out of the house, as some would have done, and leaving his friend to his fate, he apprehended this snake. He ran upstairs, got a quilt and thew it over the snake to subdue it and put it back in the tank.

“He didn’t decide to get rid of it by dumping it in a bin, he was doing the best he could to remedy the situation. After going to the shop they were going to give it to Twycross Zoo.” Police warned local stores about the raid and when Matthews attempted to offload the snake to KBN Reptiles they called police. Sentencing him, magistrates said: “This was a bit of a foolhardy enterprise.” Matthews was also told to pay £85 costs and an £80 victim surcharge and ordered to undergo eight weeks supervision. The python was later reunited with his owner.