I would tend to agree with some of the other users on this post, that there is a lot of details that are missing here, it all seems a bit fishy.

One thing to remember is that we have no guarantee that the newspeople are reporting this completely accurately, its very easy to make a small mistake over the details of a 911 call, especially if you are getting it second hand for any reason.

Second, I'm not a burm expert, but I didn't think an 8-9 foot snake would consider eating a toddler sized object, especially one that didn't smell like normal food, so if it did, what triggered the feeding response? Was the snake just so hungry that it didn't care any more? In that case why was the poor animal being starved, and the owner can add animal neglect to his list of charges.

Third and this has been said a dozen times, how did the snake and the kid come into contact?

Fourth what lead up to the attack (we'll probably never find out), was this a case of a child walking in on a starved snake, did the toddler accidentally stress the snake, causing a defensive bite that devolved into a more serious feeding attempt when the child struggled, was this just a really badly treated (and resultantly aggressive) snake?

I am sincerely sorry for the mother and her child, but hope that cooler heads prevail in reacting to the incident.