Exotic pet shop owner Jean-Claude Savoie charged after python kills sleeping brothers

CANADIAN federal police have charged the owner of an exotic pet shop over the deaths of two young boys who were asphyxiated by an African rock python while they slept. 


An African rock python sits in its enclosure inside at Mr Savoie’s exotic pet shop. It is not known if it is the same snake that killed Connor and Noah Barthe, aged six and four.

Jean Claude Savoie, 38, was accused of criminal negligence causing the deaths of the brothers and faces a possible life sentence if convicted.

Tragic: Connor and Noah Barthe, aged just four and six, were asphyxiated to death by an African rock python during a sleepover with the accused’s son.

 

“This was a unique case in Canada and required consultation with experts familiar with African rock pythons,” Royal Canadian Mounted Police Constable Jullie Rogers-Marsh said.

Noah Barthe, four, and his six-year-old brother Connor were found dead in Mr Savoie’s apartment in New Brunswick on August 5, 2013.

They had been having a sleepover with his son. Tragically, Mr Savoie had been best friends with the boys’ mother Mandy Trecartin — who lives in the apartment behind the pet store.

Mandy Trecartin (above) had left her two sons with her best friend Jean-Claude Savoie. She lives in the apartment behind the pet store Pix Facebook 

Police initially said the reptile had slithered into the second-floor residence from Mr Savoie’s exotic pet shop on the ground floor but later determined that the python had been housed in the apartment itself. Police say Mr Savoie did not have a permit to own a dangerous exotic pet.
He will return to court on April 27.