Woman left bleeding after being bitten by python hidden behind potted plants at Sembawang block

A woman was bitten by a python which was behind a row of potted plants at Block 470 Sembawang Drive on Tuesday (Oct 9) at about 4am.

Mrs Chan Yin Ha, 42, was looking for her cat among the row of potted plants when the incident happened, reported The Straits Times.

She instinctively kicked out when she suddenly felt a sharp pain in her left leg.

When she looked down, she saw a three-metre-long python.

"I thought it would coil around me," she said.

Mrs Chan, who has a fear of snakes, was terrified by the incident and immediately ran away when it happened.

She then knocked on the door of her neighbour's unit to get help but nobody answered.

She was bleeding profusely when she returned to her third storey home.

Her family members then helped to wash her wound before calling for an ambulance.

In response to a media query, the Singapore Civil Defence Force said that it received a call for assistance at 4.04am.

The police were also later called by Mrs Chan's neighbours, who had found her slipper at their doorstep along with a trail of blood along the corridor and thought that there had been a fight.

The police followed the trail of blood to Mrs Chan's residence, where they were told about the python.

They then called for a pest control agency.

According to a report from Lianhe Wanbao, officers from the pest control agency subsequently arrived and found that the python had retreated into a water pipe.

They poured hot water into the pipe to force the snake out, before it fled into a drain on the ground floor.

It was eventually caught by the agency.

Mrs Chan was taken to Khoo Teck Puat Hospital, where she received stitches and was placed under observation for a few hours.

She received a four-day medical leave certificate for her injury.

Mrs Chan also added that she had encountered a snake near her home in an earlier incident in 2016.

She had spoken to the town council and a pest control company was called in to remove the snake.

Following the most recent incident, she had also given her feedback to the town council.

She added that she would be more careful about keeping her cat within her home in the future, noting that there is a forested area near her housing estate.

Her cat eventually returned home safely.

Read the full story in The Straits Times.