Swiss police solve mystery of abandoned python

Aargau police find owner of abandoned snake Keystone-SDA

The police in Aargau have solved the case of a king python abandoned near Rheinfelden. A 54-year-old man from the region has admitted to leaving the snake in a wooded area.

According to the man himself, he deliberately abandoned the reptile to die, the Aargau cantonal police wrote in a statement on Saturday. He cited financial problems and the loss of his home as the motive for the offence. The accused now faces charges of animal cruelty before the Rheinfelden-Laufenburg Public Prosecutor’s Office.

A passer-by found the dead king python on a barbecue site on April 2 and alerted the police. The animal had apparently frozen to death. The king python is a non-poisonous constrictor snake. It is not found in Europe and is dependent on warm temperatures. The snake is native to the tropics of West and Central Africa.

Adapted from German by DeepL/ac

How we work

We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate them into English. An editor then briefly reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.

Did you find this explanation helpful? Please fill out this short survey to help us understand your needs by clicking hereExternal link.