A 12ft pet Burmese python broke out of an aquarium and strangled a two-year-old girl in her bedroom, police in Florida have said.

Shaunia Hare was already dead when paramedics arrived, said Lt Bobby Caruthers of the Sumter County Sheriff's Office.

Charles Jason Darnell, the snake's owner and boyfriend of Shaunia's mother, discovered the snake missing from its aquarium and went to the girl's room, where he found it on the girl and bite marks on her head, Mr Caruthers said.

Mr Darnell (32) stabbed the snake until he was able to free the child.

Authorities remained outside the house in the town of Oxford awaiting a search warrant to remove the snake from the home.

Oxford is about 50 miles north-west of Orlando.

Mr Darnell did not have a permit for the snake, said Joy Hill, a spokeswoman with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

He has not been charged, but Mr Caruthers said investigators were looking into whether there was child neglect or if any other laws were broken.

Some owners have freed pythons into the wild and a population of them has taken hold in the Everglades. One killed an alligator and then burst when it tried to eat it.

Scientists also speculate a number of Burmese pythons escaped in 1992 from pet shops battered by Hurricane Andrew and have been reproducing since.

“It's becoming more and more of a problem, no fault of the animal, more a fault of the human,” a state wildlife commission spokesman said.