Fort Worth Officer Captures Rattlesnake, “Prowler of the Night”

They don’t teach how to capture venomous snakes in the academy, but a Fort Worth police sergeant knew exactly how to help a homeowner who came face to face with a rattlesnake on her front porch.

Sgt. Jason Leach, who describes himself as an outdoorsman, grabbed a pole with tongs that he carries in his patrol car and trapped the serpent.

The department posted a video of the capture on its Facebook page.

“It ended pretty well,” Leach said. “I had no idea it was going to get any kind of attention.”

The homeowner, Portia Terrell, said she and her husband encountered the snake when they walked out their front door on Denet Creek Lane Saturday night.

"So the snake stood up and hissed at us,” she said. "It was a loud hiss."

It was so loud, neighbors could hear it from across the street.

"Scared us to death," Terrell said. "It was big and thick like it just had a good meal."

It was a diamondback rattlesnake.

Terrell said she's had a lifetime fear of snakes.

"We called the police because we didn't know what else to do," she said.

The first officer to arrive didn't know either.

"He shined a light on it and he jumped back into the bushes and the next thing I knew we had four cops in our yard," Terrell said.

It turns out Leach is one cop who knows as much about reptiles as robbers.

As the other officers and everyone else stood back, he trapped the snake single-handedly.

Wildlife expert Randall Kennedy quickly arrived and took it from there.

"I showed up and the police already had the snake in the snake tongs, but they didn't know where to go with it from there," he said. "So we got the snake bagged up."

Kennedy, owner of DFW Wildlife Control, plans on releasing the snake back into the wild soon.

"Nobody got bit. Snake lives. Everybody is happy," he said.

The sergeant said he’s glad everyone is getting a kick out of it.

"I told my guys at roll call, I said, 'I guess I caught the prowler of the night,'" Leach joked.