Python Strangles Owner Bearing Chicken Dinner

A 13-foot-long, 44-pound pet python, apparently mistaking his master for food, wrapped itself around the young man’s neck and strangled him as he went to feed the snake a live chicken.

The medical examiner’s office said Grant Williams, 19, died Wednesday of asphyxiation due to compression of his neck.

The python attacked Williams in the hallway outside their Bronx apartment Wednesday afternoon after the man had returned from buying the chicken across the street.

The reptile had never been fed a live chicken before, only live rabbits, and the scent apparently made him go wild, said Williams’ 16-year-old brother, Lamar.

Grant was found by a neighbor in the hallway in a pool of blood. Emergency medical workers had to pry the snake from the teenager, who was pronounced dead at a hospital.

Lamar said the snake never touched the family cat in the five months since it was bought at a pet store for $300. The brothers owned several snakes over the last six years, including two other pythons and a dozen water, milk and garter snakes kept in five tanks.

Lamar said he and his brother would catch grasshoppers, salamanders and turtles in local vacant lots as youngsters, and dreamed about becoming herpetologists, who study reptiles and amphibians.

Lamar said his big brother’s death may have changed his plans. “I’m kind of scared of big snakes now,” he said.

Frank Indiviglio, a reptile expert for the Bronx Zoo, said pythons usually don’t prey on humans.

“Probably what happened is the snake was especially hungry and the (chicken) scent got him into a feeding mode,” Indiviglio said. “They hunt a lot by scent, as opposed to sight, and if something smells right they might strike at it.”

The snake was turned over to the Center for Animal Care and Control, where it was placed in a 6-foot-long tank.

Pythons are legal pets in New York City, since unlike large cats, birds of prey, poisonous snakes and bears, “they are not considered vicious and wild and ferocious,” said Fred Winters, a Health Department spokesman.