I would have educated them that it would take a much larger snake, instead of not informing thease people I would have let them know that this species of snake doesnt get large, they dont kill people..

Honestly thier fear can be backed up with some evidence, In a town near where I grew up in Arizona an 11 year old boy was killed by a large reticulated python that the family owned and when he was discovered the snake had the boy up to his knees in his mouth....

My point is they didnt know that snake was "large" for the species, they probably thought this was going to be a 16 foot snake one day...