In a shocking incident, a 64-year-old woman was found alive after enduring a terrifying hours-long suffocation attack by a 4-meter-long python. Arrom Arunroj was washing dishes in her outdoor kitchen in Samut Prakan, Thailand, when she felt a sudden pain in her right thigh. Initially, she thought she had been bitten by a monitor lizard, but when she looked down, she saw a huge python coiled around her leg.
“I didn’t notice the snake until it bit me. I looked down, and it was wrapping itself around my leg. I was scared that the python was going to kill me, so I screamed as loud as I could until a passerby heard me. I’ve never been so terrified in my entire life. The snake just wouldn’t let go. I’m sure it was waiting for me to die so it could eat me. So I just prayed and did my best to stay alive,” Arrom said.
As she tried to pull the snake’s head away, she fell, allowing the reptile to coil itself tightly around her torso. Arrom, who works as a cleaner at a children’s hospital in Bangkok and has lived alone since her husband passed away last year, struggled for over two hours before her cries were finally heard by a neighbor, who quickly called the police.
Dramatic images captured Arrom injured, sitting helplessly on the ground after the attack, which took place on September 17. Her arms were pale and numb, and she had wounds on her leg where the python had bitten her. She was immediately rushed to the hospital for treatment.
Police Chief Sergeant Anusorn Wongmalee, commander of the Crime Prevention and Suppression Unit at Phra Samut Chedi Police Station, reported that the police received the call around 10 p.m. “The incident took place at a ground-floor rental apartment with five rooms built side-by-side. In the room where the victim lived, the door was locked.
The police and rescuers could hear her faint cries from inside, so we broke the door down to rescue her. What we saw shocked us. The elderly woman was being suffocated by a massive python that must have weighed more than 20 kg. We used every tool we could to try to free her. It took more than 30 minutes to remove the snake. It was then released back into the forest behind the apartment,” he said.
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Wongmalee added that although pythons are commonly found throughout Thailand, attacks on humans are rare. “They are not venomous, but they kill their prey by stunning them with a bite before coiling around and crushing them to death.”
