SHAMOKIN, Pa. – The city police station was filled this week with the sound of rattlesnakes.
Receptionist Mallary Shingara said when she walked into the chief’s office Thursday and saw them, “I dropped my cell phone and almost my coffee.”
It turns out the snakes were evidence.
Police Chief John Brown said officers answered a call Wednesday night about a woman threatening to harm herself and found the woman in her basement holding a knife to her throat.
She put down the knife but began waving the snakes at the officers, and was bitten on the arms and face. She put down the snakes and again grabbed the knife, but Mount Carmel police arrived and immobilized her with a stun weapon, Brown said.
The woman was taken to a hospital for treatment of the snake bites, and officers brought aquariums back to the station containing two western diamondback rattlesnakes, a pygmy rattlesnake and two copperheads.
“I can’t get my evidence guy to put them in the evidence locker,” he said.
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