Crocodile savages man as friends climb tree to escape jaws of death

A CROCODILE killed a 22-year-old man and then kept his body in its jaws while his two friends watched in horror from a nearby tree.

Shaun Blowers and Ashley McGough, both 19, recounted how the reptile snatched Brett Mann at Finniss River, which cuts through a flooded tropical wilderness about 50 miles southwest of Darwin in the Northern Territory on Sunday.

Blowers said the 13-foot saltwater crocodile also lunged at them, but they scrambled up a tree in the swollen stream. A police search party found them still in the tree 22 hours later.