Python attacks toddler in Charlotte park

Python attacks toddler in Charlotte park

CHARLOTTE (AP) — A 15-month-old boy suffered minor injuries when he was attacked by a 4-foot ball python in a Mecklenburg County park here.

Christine Abdelmonem had taken her son, Adam, to get a better look at some ducks waddling nearby in Freedom Park on Monday. As she lowered the boy to the ground, she felt a tug and saw the snake wrapped around his leg.

She screamed for help and two maintenance workers rushed over. One hit the nonvenomous snake with a shovel before trapping it in a bucket, said Karla Thornhill of Mecklenburg Park and Recreation.

Adam was treated at Carolinas Medical Center for bite marks on his leg.

"When I pulled it off, he was fine," Abdelmonem said. "I wasn't."

John Calchera, a pet store owner in nearby Pineville, took in the constrictor snake. He thinks it may have been abandoned by a pet owner and that it won't survive being beaten.

"It's a totally harmless thing," he said. "Why attack a harmless thing?"

A toddler's a harmless thing too, ya frickin' retard.