I think this issue is related to http://bugs.python.org/issue11158, which is in turn related to http://bugs.python.org/issue6721 (Locks in python standard library should be sanitized on fork).
When a mutex created by a parent process is used from within a child process, this can lead not only to a deadlock, but also to SIGSEGV.
To understand the purpose of pthread_atfork, recall that fork duplicates the whole memory space, including mutexes in their current locking state, but only the calling thread: other threads are not running in the child process. The mutexes are not usable after the fork and must be initialized with pthread_mutex_init in the child process. This is a limitation of the current implementation and might or might not be present in future versions.
They must be initialized.
Suggesting to close both #11148 and #11158 as dupe of #6721.