12-year-old boy goes missing while swimming in river
Australian police say they have found the remains of what they believe is a 12-year-old girl who was “attacked by a crocodile” while swimming in a river in a remote Aboriginal community in the country’s north.
After searching the scene, police found remains, with injuries consistent with an alligator attack, saying they “believe it is that of a missing 12-year-old boy.”
“This is devastating news for the family, the community and everyone involved in the search,” added Major Erica Gibson of the Northern Territory Police.
Gibson said law enforcement will continue efforts to find and capture the alligator, a territorial animal believed to still be present in the surrounding area.
The girl was last seen on Tuesday swimming in Mango Creek, in the community of Nganmarianga, formerly known as Palumba, about 357 kilometres southwest of Darwin, the capital of the Northern Territory.
Crocodile attacks are rare but not unheard of in this rural northern Australian state.
A 4.5m crocodile was shot dead after being chased by locals near Nganmarianga in 2013.
In 2017, a 54-year-old man was also the victim of a non-fatal attack in the same area.
In mid-June, a 12-foot saltwater crocodile that had terrorized an Aboriginal community in northern Australia, attacking residents and eating dogs, was eaten at a traditional feast after being shot by police.
In Australia, estuary or saltwater crocodiles can reach six metres in length, and are found in abundance in the tropical region of northern Australia, after being declared a protected species in 1971, when there were about three thousand wild crocodiles left, as a result of indiscriminate hunting of the reptiles.
Preventive measures have allowed the Northern Territory’s estuarine crocodile population to recover to around 100,000 this decade.
