Python eats woman in Richards Bay hoax
A message going viral on social media claims that a giant snake swallowed a woman near Mondi.
DEPENDING on which version of the story you read, the overstuffed python swallowed a drunk man in India, an unknown woman in Richards Bay, a man in Qujing, China, a person of unknown gender in Indonesia, or a four-year-old child in Malaysia.
All of the above can’t be simultaneously true, obviously. The message includes a photograph of a large python and claims that the picture was taken by Linda Laina Nyatoro, a South African reporter who witnessed the incident.
Hoax Slayer, a site that aims to debunk email hoaxes and expose internet scams reported the claims in the message were untrue.
The very same picture has been circulating in other contexts since at least September, 2012. Linda Laina Nyatoro did post the image on her Facebook page in June 2013, but states in comments that she did not witness the attack as claimed in the message.
Earlier versions claim that the snake in the picture swallowed a drunk man asleep by a roadway, in Indonesia after floods hit the region.
None of these variants to the story have been confirmed by any credible news reports.
While large snakes such as rock pythons have killed humans, confirmed and documented cases of such snakes actually swallowing adult humans are very rare.
