Australian man kills deadly snake while driving
N’dea Yancey-Bragg
A police officer in Australia who pulled over a driver for speeding discovered the man had a pretty good excuse – he had just fought off a deadly snake and was racing to a hospital.
A 27-year-old Gladstone man identified only as “Jimmy” was driving about 62 mph on a highway west of Calliope in Queensland last month when he spotted an “angry” brown snake slithering through the gear stick toward his leg, according to a release from police.
“I just started to brake,” Jimmy said in a video released by police Tuesday. “…And the more I moved my legs … it just started to wrap around me. Its head just started striking at the (driver’s seat) chair, between my legs.”
Jimmy said he used a seat belt and a knife to fight off the reptile while trying to stop the vehicle. Eastern brown snakes have powerful venom which can cause progressive paralysis and uncontrollable bleeding. They are responsible for causing more deaths from snake bites than any other species in Australia, according to The Australian Museum.
Their initial bite, however, is often painless. Jimmy feared he’d been bitten, so he decided to kill the snake and rush to the nearest hospital. That’s when local police spotted his vehicle traveling at about 76 mph and pulled him over.
“A brown snake or a tiger snake is in the back of the ute (truck), I think it has bitten me, it was in the car with me,” Jimmy immediately told the officer. “You can feel my heart, mate.”
The traffic officer found the snake in the back of the truck and called paramedics who determined Jimmy had not been bitten but was suffering from shock.
“It was pretty terrifying,” Jimmy said. “I’ve never been so happy to see red and blue lights.”
Although police said the snake is one of the world’s deadliest, they noted snakes are protected under the Nature Conservation Act 1992 and warned people not to try to capture or kill any wildlife in Queensland.