A WOMAN has been found strangled to death by an 8ft python in a house containing 140 snakes, cops have said.
Laura Hurst, 36, was found with the reptile around her neck at the property in Indiana, which had been set up by the local county sheriff to house a snake collection.
Indiana State Police spokesman Sergeant Kim Riley said in a statement that Hurst kept 20 of her own snakes at the house, which she visited twice a week.
The house is owned by Benton County Sheriff Don Munson, who lives next door, and he revealed he found Hurst on Wednesday evening.
Munson told the Journal & Courier that Hurst’s death was a “tragic accident with loss of human life” and that he was “being fully cooperative with everybody”.
“I’ve given all information to the state police,” he said.
Cops were called at just before 9pm to the property in Oxford with a report of a female found unresponsive with a Reticulated Python wrapped around her neck, said Riley.
“She appears to have been strangled by the snake,” Riley told the Journal & Courier.
He added that an autopsy will be performed on Friday which will hopefully give an official cause of death and in the meantime investigations are continuing.
In 2018 lover Dan Brandon was strangled to death by his own pet python after it wrapped itself around him and suffocated him.
Dan, 31, was discovered at his home in Church Crookham, Fleet, in the room in which he kept his snakes, with the pet out of his pen.
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Earlier this year, a circus trainer in Russia was killed by a python in front of horrified parents and kids.
Shocking video shows the circus trainer going into the ring with the and acknowledges applause as he wraps the reptile around his neck.
The snake tamer, who has not yet been named, appeared to handle the snake confidently before suddenly falling to his knees and then flat on the ground.
