Officials: Trapper faked capture of 14-foot python in Bradenton
By KEITH MORELLI | The Tampa Tribune
The story was full of danger and drama and was made for television, literally.
A colorful and quotable backwoods trapper gets a tip that there's a huge snake coiled in a culvert near a day care center in Bradenton.
The trapper and his son wrangle the reptile out, as paramedics stand by just in case. Television news stations are called. Newspaper reporters and photographers flock to the scene.
The 14-foot Burmese python looks aggressive. The trapper nudges it with a plastic lid of a storage bin, and the snake hisses, shows its rows of teeth and lunges. It is great video that comes at a time when hysteria about pythons escaping into Florida's swamps and suffocating babies in Sumter County is at a peak.
It just wasn't true. State wildlife investigators say the rescue was staged by the publicity hungry trapper.
It turns out that the trapper, Justin Matthews, had purchased the Burmese python from a wholesale dealer in Tampa a month before he trapped it near a Sweetbay supermarket in Bradenton, authorities said.
"He admitted the snake was his," said Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission spokesman Gary Morse on Thursday. "He admitted he staged the whole thing."
Matthews, who owns Matthews Wildlife Rescue, said his plan was to increase awareness of the python problem.
"I did it for wildlife education," he said Thursday afternoon. "With all the problems with pythons, especially after that small child was killed by python, I was thinking of what I could do to bring awareness, to tell people there is a place to take them rather than release them.''
Matthews is keeping the snake, which he named Sweetie, and will use it as an educational exhibit.
Reporters at The Tampa Tribune and WFLA got a tip last week that the snake belonged to Matthews all along. But Matthews denied it when asked. He said he did buy a large python a month earlier but it was not the same snake.
"I wouldn't do it again," he said of the staged capture. "It was a mistake but it did bring more awareness, so something good did come out of it. I did do it for publicity. I did get the word out."
He said he didn't expect the story would be so big.
"I didn't realize," he said. "I thought it would just hit the local news. I was trying to reach people in Manatee County. As it turned out, it went national. It really shocked me.
"I didn't feel as though I doing anything dishonest," he said. "Looking back, some people out there may not trust me because of it. To those people, I apologize."
A few months ago, Matthews' python actually was loose in south Hillsborough County. Vernon Yates, owner of Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation in Seminole, captured it then. He recognized the snake on television when Matthews displayed it for the cameras.
"We found it running at large in south Hillsborough County a few months ago," Yates said. "We knew where it came from and the owner didn't want it."
He said he kept the python for a while before turning it over to Southeast Reptile Exchange in Tampa in the hopes of getting the reptile to a good home. Yates said the snake was not aggressive. Matthews got the snake from the Tampa wholesaler.
Joe Fauci, owner of Southeast Reptile Exchange, said the transaction was by the book.
"He got the snake from me legally," Fauci said. But Matthews' story didn't seem right after the capture, Fauci said.
"I couldn't positively identify the snake," depicted on the news reports, he said. "But that whole story was fishy."
Fauci agreed with Yates that the hype about pythons is exaggerated.
Yates said Matthews did a disservice to the exotic pet industry and the state and needlessly added to the current python hysteria. Yates is a proponent of the pet industry and said people should have the right to keep exotic pets if they can properly care for them. What Matthews did, Yates said, played on the fears people have that pythons are slithering amok over the state.
"He made people afraid of walking out the door. He said that pythons are all over Manatee County. That's a lie."
Lol, I saw that on the news a little while ago.
He should be charged for the paramedics that were at the "scene" and fined for putting others at risk when he left the snake there, only to "capture" it later.
He need to be find for not have that snake chiped in the first place. He then needs to have his permit taken away along with all his animals and be band form ever getting them agian. It's :ahole: like this that are going to make me have to move out of state because I will not give up my animals.
:nono:
:noway:
