News
Croc eats Aboriginal teenager
(April 22, 2011)
An Aboriginal teenager is missing, presumed dead, after being attacked by a crocodile in Northern Australia.
The 14-year-old was swimming with his brothers in a creek on Milingimbi Island, about 250 miles east of Darwin when he was bitten, then carried upstream by the tide.
The boy was not found during a large-scale land, air and sea search. Local police say the community is ‘shocked and devastated’ by what has happened.
There are around two fatal saltwater crocodile attacks every year in Australia’s Northern Territory. The crocodile population is estimated at 80,000 there and steadily increasing due to a protection order in place since 1971 when they were almost hunted to extinction.
This incident may revive a debate about culling in the Northern Territory, where the reptiles that can grow up to 23 feet long, out-number humans two-to-one.