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In a scene straight out of a horror movie, a teenager was strangled to death by a seven-meter python as the boy was swimming in a river in Deli Serdang, North Sumatra, late last week.

The victim, M. Zakaria, was a junior high school student who was swimming with three of his friends in the Tembung River when the snake reportedly emerged from a hole near the river­bank.

Zakaria did not have the energy to save himself during last Thursday’s incident, while his friends managed to get out of the river. Zakaria was strangled and was “almost swallowed,” according to locals.

His three friends cried for help. Local residents arrived to throw spears at the snake, which eventually released its hold on Zakaria, but it had bitten the boy.

The residents took Zakaria to Mitra Husada Hospital in the Pekan Tembung area but he could not be saved. His body was taken to his home in Sei Rotan village, Deli Serdang district.

After the incident, residents requested help from two snake tamers, who managed to catch a six-meter python on Friday. However, it was not the one that killed Zakaria.

“It was a different one,” Muhammad Syafii, 57, a Bandar Klipa resident, said on Saturday.

Syafii, who lives not far away from the river, said the snake that was caught bore no wounds on its body, while the snake that killed Zakaria had darker skin and clearly would bear wounds from the spear attacks.

According to the snake tamers, Syafii said, there were still two other large snakes in the area where the boy was killed.

Syafii said that in the area where the python was encountered, there were two big holes that served as waste dump tunnels, allegedly from a textile factory beside the Tembung River.

Not far from the tunnel, there is also a big, decades-old banyan tree on the riverbank.

The Tembung River is about 15 kilometers east of Medan.

 

Antara