Mother found guilty of murder after daughter, 2, was strangled by starving pet python
- Jaren Hare could face 35 years in prison
- Python named 'Gypsy' had tried to eat the girl
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A mother, whose two-year-old daughter died after her pet Burmese python strangled and tried to eat her, was found guilty of third-degree murder on Thursday.
Jaren Hare, 21, now faces up to 35 years in prison after a jury in Florida took two hours to also find her and boyfriend Charles Darnell, 34, guilty of manslaughter and child neglect charges.
Defence lawyer Rhiannon Arnold told the court in Bushnell that she has had to live with the horror 'like a dagger across her soul' for two years.
Convicted: Jaren Hare and Charles Darnell also faced child neglect charges
Hare, she said, never believed that her 'gentle' 8ft 6in pet, named Gypsy, could be capable of killing a child and was distraught when her daughter Shaianna was found dead in her cot in July 2009 with the snake coiled tightly around her neck.
The starving snake had been trying to eat her, according to a deputy chief medical examiner, Wendy Lavezzi.
'There were also several clusters of puncture wounds that represent bites from the snake as the snake was trying to ingest her, basically,' Lavezzi told the jury while they viewed the grim post-mortem photos of the child.
Prosecutor Pete Magrino said in closing arguments that Hare and her boyfriend were completely at fault.
The tragedy was, he said: 'Needless, senseless, careless and reckless and the responsibility for Shaianna Hare’s death lies with those two defendants.'
He showed the jury two pictures of the girl, one of her smiling happily and another of her after the post-mortem, which found she had been bitten by the albino snake and died of asphyxiation.
Gypsy, he said, escaped from a tank over which the defendants had placed only a quilt as a makeshift lid.
Hare burst into tears as the verdicts were read, while Darnell showed no emotion other than to place his arm around her.
Both had rejected a pre-trial deal that could have seen them jailed for up to 10 years.
Huge beast: Investigators take the 8ft 6in python from the property where it killed two-year-old Shaianna Hare
In her own closing arguments, Miss Arnold told the six-member jury that Hare was never anything but a 'loving mother' to the toddler and insisted the girl’s death was just an accident.
Ismail Solis, another lawyer on the defence team, added: 'That event will shadow her for the rest of her life.
'But there’s not a scintilla of evidence that Jaren Ashley Hare was ever a bad mother.
'We’re talking about Gypsy, a pet that turned killer. Did she look at this and say "Gee, is this potentially a killer animal that’s going to kill us all?" No, that was not her mindset.'
But assistant state attorney Magrino said that the couple should have known that keeping a deadly snake in a tank at their home in Oxford, Florida, starving hungry and without a secure lid to keep it inside, posed a danger.
The python had escaped several times before and had not been fed for a month.
He also showed the court a photograph from 2005 when rangers in Florida’s Everglades National Park found a 13ft Burmese python dead after swallowing a six-foot alligator.
He said: 'It doesn’t take a rocket scientist. If that kind of snake will take down an alligator, it will eat something else – even a small two-year-old girl.'
He added: 'The death of Shaianna Hare was totally preventable.
'The snake’s not at fault in this case, folks, it’s a wild animal.'
But the defendants’ lawyers said that Shaianna’s death was just an awful accident, that had left them devastated.
Miss Arnold said: 'Charles Darnell and Jaren Hare never in their wildest dreams ever thought this would happen.
'They had no idea that their tame pet would suddenly go wild.'
Darnell, she said, was 'guilty of making a stupid decision and having a stupid pet. He’s guilty of not being a dog lover, and liking snakes.'
A sentencing hearing will be held at a later date.
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