Questions linger as officials seize more exotic animals from New Brunswick pet store

At this point we have some clarity in the deaths of Connor and Noah Barthe, the young New Brunswick brothers who died while sleeping in a family friend's apartment containing a four-metre African rock python.

RCMP have confirmed the boys, aged 6 and 4, died of asphyxiation after the python escaped its enclosure and made its way to the living room, where they were sleeping.

We know the python was seized and euthanized. And we know that, according to the exotic wildlife ownership rules of the province, African rock pythons are not allowed as pets.

For whatever it is worth, for whatever solace or answers it brings, this is what we know. We also know that the province’s Department of Natural Resources seized more animals from Reptile Ocean on Friday, including as many as 27 animals that are considered prohibited pets.

[ Related: Crews seize animals from building where snake killed boys ] What we don't know is how Jean-Claude Savoie, the Campbellton, N.B., man who lived in the second-storey apartment and ran the Reptile Ocean pet store below, came into possession of the snake, whether he will be charged or what will come next. Those questions are pressing ones, and they seem to be getting more pressing as time passes. CBC News reports that officials cleared out the Reptile Ocean pet store on Friday and found that the now-dead African rock python was not the only illegal animal being kept at the store. To the contrary, officials seized a total of 27 illegal pets from the building. That number includes some endangered species.

The store contained hundreds of animals including two small dwarf caiman crocodiles, sulcata tortoises, anacondas and iguanas. Four large American alligators have been euthanized on site.

Focusing on the rock python, it is unclear how Reptile Ocean would have obtained the creature. Reports indicate, however, that the python and other exotic animals may have been placed there by the government during its time as a reptile zoo.

[ More Brew: Autopsies confirm New Brunswick boys died by asphyxiation ]

Reptile Ocean was once a zoo, although it hasn't been licenced as such for some time. As a zoo, it could have requested permits for exotic animals that are not allowed as pets. Those animals may have remained on site after Reptile Ocean ceased being a zoo.

Mark Doiron, a former Reptile Ocean zoo employee, told CBC Saint John that the government seized the rock python from an "unintelligent person" who had wanted it as a pet. The animal was turned over to Savoie, as the owner of the local reptile zoo.

"The whole populace is trying to make it look like he ordered, or he had this snake illegally when no one wants to factor in that he isn't even the owner of that animal," Doiron said in a radio interview. "The province owns that animal."

It appears the rock python was not the only time the province placed at animal at Reptile Ocean. Environment Canada confirmed to Global News that the agency seized both a rock python and a crocodile in separate incidences in 2002. In both cases, the animals were taken to the zoo for safe keeping.

This may turn out to be how the African rock python came to be at Reptile Ocean in the first place, but doesn’t clear up how it remained there when the zoo became a pet store, and its upper level became a residential apartment.

Or how those other illegal pets managed to remain at the location until they were seized on Friday.

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