Thai woman freed after hours of being strangled by a python

Bangkok, Thailand
CNN
 — 

A Thai woman has been rescued by police after being strangled by a python for more than two hours.

The 64-year-old woman, who gave her name as Arom, was doing the dishes at home on the outskirts of the Thai capital when she felt several bites on her leg, she said in a police video obtained by CNN that captured the attack. “The snake just shot forward and bit me,” she said.

The python then wrapped itself around her until she fell to the ground. She struggled to free herself from the snake’s tightening coils for two hours without success, according to the police.

The woman cried out for help, but no one answered initially. Eventually, one of her neighbors heard her distressed calls and sought assistance from police.

“We were shocked to see the lady was tied down on the floor with the python wrapping around (her),” Police Major Sergeant Anusorn Wongmalee of the Phra Samut Chedi Police Station in Samut Prakan, a province south of Bangkok, told CNN. “The snake was really big.”

In footage filmed by police, Arom was seen sitting on the floor of a tiny dark room, trapped in the grip of the python, which had wrapped itself around her waist.

It took rescuers about 30 minutes to free her, after which she was sent to the hospital for treatment, according to the police.

The snake escaped afterward, police said, adding: “We couldn’t catch it.”

Thailand is home to 250 snake species, including three varieties of pythons — the reticulated, Burmese and Blood — according to Thai National Parks.

Pythons are not venomous, but they kill by suffocation, coiling themselves around their prey and squeezing tight to constrict blood flow before swallowing their victims whole.

According to Thailand’s National Health Security office, some 12,000 people were treated for venomous snake and animal bites in the country last year. Twenty-six people died from snake bites during that period, official figures show.

The attack on Arom is the second such incident in the country to attract global attention in recent weeks. Last month, a man had his testiclebitten by a python while sitting in the bathroom.

He managed to survive the encounter byhitting the snake with a cleaning brush before calling a security guard to help remove it, according to local media.