A 2-year-old girl was strangled by the family's pet python Wednesday morning in this town about 60 miles north of Orlando.

While Burmese pythons, which are not native to North America, live in the wild in south Florida as far north as Sarasota, the snake was a family pet that escaped from its cage, a spokesman for the Sumter County sheriff's office told the Orlando Sentinel.

A 2-year-old girl was strangled by the family's pet python Wednesday morning in this town about 60 miles north of Orlando.

While Burmese pythons, which are not native to North America, live in the wild in south Florida as far north as Sarasota, the snake was a family pet that escaped from its cage, a spokesman for the Sumter County sheriff's office told the Orlando Sentinel.

Bernard Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison on Monday for defrauding thousands of investors with a massive multi-billion dollar Ponzi scheme.

The sentence given by U.S. District Judge Denny Chin was the maximum available and is inline with what prosecutors had hoped for.

A black bear relocated to a southern Florida forest last month has returned 150 miles east to Palm Beach County and was captured by animal authorities for the second time Wednesday.

A wildlife official fired two tranquilizer darts to the bear while it was eating berries from trees at the Palms West Hospital in Wellington. Half a dozen wildlife officials then placed the half-asleep animal into a cage and was identified through an ear tag as the same bear captured in a Weston neighborhood and taken to the Picayune Strand State Forest in Collier County in May.

A Florida man suspected of robbing a bank was arrested after several witnesses reported seeing a drunken man covered in red dye.

Pinellas County sheriff's detectives think a homeless 53-year-old man, Michael Prance, robbed Seminole's RBC Bank Thursday, escaping with the bank's cash, the St. Petersburg Times reported.