I swear, the stupidity of some people never ceases to amaze me.
Specifically, the idiot who let his highly venomous spitting cobra escape a couple weeks ago in the northwest Raleigh, North Carolina area.
It terrorized residents for two days after it escaped, (and was eventually found) in a residential neighborhood where there are people, pets and houses everywhere. The snake was found in the evening on June 30th, and taken to a secure facility that hasn’t been specified.
According to The News & Observer,
“Christopher Gifford of Chaminox Place faces 40 charges related to his escaped snake and other venomous snakes — but they are all misdemeanors under North Carolina law.”
And the Raleigh police department confirmed the news in a series of tweets:
40 charges? At the ripe old age of 21? You can’t make this stuff up. I know we’ve all done stupid shit when we were 21, but this… he wins.
I’m a little embarrassed to admit the fact that ole Chris and I are both North Carolinians, and this is all I saw on the local news for 48 hours straight. Luckily, I live closer to Charlotte and this was in Raleigh, but let me tell you I was on high alert because I had no clue how quick and far these things could travel.
And get this, Chris’ attorney even said one of the charges is from November 2020, when the snake apparently made ANOTHER escape, but it was never reported to authorities like it should’ve been.
And, not only that, but he has a TikTok page where he posts about all of his deadly reptiles like vipers, rattle snakes, and a green mamba that bit him back in March. At that time, they had to have anti-venom rushed to North Carolina from a South Caroline zoo in order to save his life.
WRAL reported more specifics as to the nature of the charges:
“Owners must follow specific regulations, including housing them in secure enclosures with warning signs and notifying authorities whenever one escapes.
Thirty-six of the misdemeanors are for keeping various venomous snakes in plastic containers without any locks. Three others involved mislabeling the containers for certain snakes.”
No locks on the cages? I understand less and less about humans every day.
Apparently, the mamba bite wasn’t enough to stop Chris. There’s plenty of videos on his page from the last couple months showing off all his reptiles. I understand a hobby, but at this point, it feels like he should just open a zoo instead of keeping them in a residential basement.
And, the News & Observer also reported that he would take some of the snakes outside to HIS YARD to PLAY with them often and filmed it all. I know he’s 21, but he lived with his parents and they allowed all of this, shouldn’t they be responsible in some regard, too?
Here’s Chris with the green mamba:
And whatever this is…
And get this, y’all. He kept all of these snakes in his parents basement. Look at all the cages. It legitimately looks like a damn zoo:
Here’s a little footage from the final capture:
