GREENSBURG (KDKA) — Police are searching for suspects after two pythons were stolen from a school in Westmoreland County over the weekend.

It’s a theft that has many people asking why, and the answer to that question is that the snakes are worth some money. But they are also a valuable learning tool to the students.

Joshua Acebo attends the Karat School in Greensburg where students thrive on hands on learning.

In the science learning lab, students learn responsibility by caring for parakeets, rabbits and numerous reptiles.

But one of the tanks is empty after a break-in Sunday morning.

“The door was filed open and the lock or the door handle was jimmied so it was hanging down there,” said Susan McDonald, of the Karat School. “And they had just obviously filed it down to get in.”

Two pythons, one named Shadow, who is about three-feet long, and the other named Deuce, who is about a foot, were taken.

“When I found out they were gone I was just hurt,” said Jacob McHenry, a student at the school. “I was thinking to myself, ‘what kind of person would do this?”

Police say the person who did this appears to have known what they were after.

“It seems, in the preliminary here, that’s what they went for, nothing else was disturbed,” said Capt. George Seranko, of Greensburg Police. “They went in, took the snakes; they actually went into another cupboard and got a box to put the snakes in and leave with the snakes.”

But the snake tank won’t be empty for long. A man from Pittsburgh heard what happened and is planning to donate a four-foot python named Brutus sometime next week.

“It makes me happy because now we get to put another python in that tank,” said McHenry.

The pythons have a value of about $400, and that will go up if the pythons continue to grow.

Anyone with information on the case is being asked to contact the Greensburg Police Department.

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