Outback crocodile kills German tourist in park

A YOUNG German woman was killed

The 24-year-old tourist, her sister and other members of their tour group were swimming in a waterhole in Kakadu National Park late on Tuesday when the woman disappeared.

Rangers retrieved her body yesterday after harpooning the crocodile about a mile from where the woman was attacked: “The harpooning caused the crocodile to let go of what he had,” Northern Territory Police Commander Max Pope said.

Crocodiles attack by locking their jaws around their prey and executing a “death roll” underwater. They do not usually eat all their prey immediately, but wedge it under a rock or underwater log, returning later.

Tour group members said they saw a dark shape moving through the water just before the young woman vanished. Her sister was swimming nearby at the time, police said. Their names were not released. Other witnesses said they heard her scream and she vanished beneath the water.

James Rothwell, 24, of Essex, England, said he felt a crocodile brush against his leg. “Seconds later I heard a girl scream and the girl went under the water.”

Rothwell said people on shore thought it may have been a gag, but when he reached shore, he cast a flashlight on the water and “saw two red eyes going away from where the girl had just gone under, and we saw the outline of a crocodile swimming along the surface of the water.”

Park rangers and police from the nearby town of Jabiru searched through the night for the woman after the leader of the nine-member tour group called them using a satellite phone.

Pope said the group had ignored signs warning them about the danger of crocodiles whose numbers have boomed in the Kakadu National Park since they became a protected species in 1971, but attacks remain rare.

Kakadu is listed by the United Nations as a World Heritage site, and attracts 200,000 tourists a year. It covers almost 12,000 square miles of pristine floodplain and plateau, including spectacular waterfalls, a towering 125-mile long sandstone escarpment and many rare and endangered animals.