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14-foot crocodile that killed girl swimming in Australian creek is shot dead by rangers, police say
Rangers have shot dead a 14-foot crocodile in northern Australia after it killed a 12-year-old girl while she was swimming with her family last week, police said Wednesday.
The girl’s death was the first fatal crocodile attack in the Northern Territory since 2018 when an Indigenous woman was killed while gathering mussels in a river. The attack has rekindled debate on whether more should be done to curb the crocodile population in the Northern Territory, where the protected species has increasingly encroached on human populations.
Wildlife rangers had been attempting to trap or shoot the crocodile since the girl was attacked last week in Mango Creek near Palumpa, an Outback Indigenous community in the Northern Territory.
They shot the animal Sunday after getting permission from the region’s traditional landowners. Saltwater crocodiles are considered a totem by many Indigenous Australians.
Police said analysis had confirmed the animal was the one that killed the girl.
“The events of last week have had a huge impact on the family and local police are continuing to provide support to everyone impacted,” senior Sgt. Erica Gibson said in the police statement.
Northern Territory-based crocodile scientist Grahame Webb said a reptile the size of the one shot had to be male and at least 30 years old. They grow throughout their lives and can live up to 70 years.
The girl’s death came weeks after the Northern Territory approved a 10-year plan to contain croc numbers, lifting the rate of culling near human habitat from 300 to 1,200 a year.
The Northern Territory government said after the latest fatality that crocs could not be allowed to outnumber humans. The government has previously said it “uses a risk-based strategic management approach to determine the level of management activity” for crocodiles.
“We live in a place where crocodiles occupy our water places,” Northern Territory Police Minister Brent Potter said last week, according to CBS News partner network BBC News. “It’s just a reminder to stay out of the water as best we can.”
The Northern Territory has a land area around the size of France and Spain combined but only 250,000 people. Croc numbers are estimated at 100,000. The crocodile population was as low as 3,000 before hunting them was outlawed by federal legislation in 1971.
Webb said the territory’s crocs had largely stabilized their own population in recent years by killing each other for food or territory. “They eat each other. The crocs have been controlling their own population. It’s not really people that have been controlling them,” Webb said.
Crocodiles are highly mobile, and have periodically had dangerous encounters with people in Australia. Just last month, police shot and killed a saltwater crocodile that was terrorizing a remote Australian community by eating dogs and lunging at kids. The reptile was cooked and eaten by local residents.
On New Year’s Eve, a crocodile jumped on board a fisherman’s boat in Queensland while the man was fishing at a creek. He was not hurt.
In May 2023, a man snorkeling off the coast of North Queensland, Australia, was attacked by a crocodile – and survived by prying its jaws off his head. That same month, the remains of an Australian man who went missing on a fishing trip in crocodile-infested waters were found inside two of the reptiles.
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Former Bolivian President Evo Morales claims his car was fired upon in attempted assassination
Former President Evo Morales of Bolivia claimed he survived an assassination attempt on Sunday after unidentified men opened fire on his car. He was not injured and there was no immediate confirmation of the attack from authorities.
Morales alleged the shots were fired while he was being driven in Bolivia’s coca leaf-growing region of Chapare, the ex-president’s rural stronghold whose residents have blockaded the country’s main east-west highway for the past two weeks.
The roadblocks — protesting what Morales’ supporters decry as President Luis Arce’s attempts to sabotage his former mentor and bitter political rival — have isolated cities and disrupted food and fuel supplies.
Morales, who led Bolivia from 2006 to 2019, emerged unscathed from the alleged attack Sunday, appearing on his weekly radio show in his usual calm manner to recount what happened.
He told the radio host that as he was leaving home for the radio station, hooded men fired at least 14 shots at his car, wounding his driver.
Morales was quick to blame his successor, President Arce, with whom he is fighting to be the candidate of governing socialist party in next year’s presidential election. He claimed that Arce’s government resorted to physical force having been unable to defeat him politically.
Juan Karita / AP
“Arce is going to go down as the worst president in history,” Morales said. “Shooting a former president is the last straw.”
Officials in Arce’s government did not respond to requests for comment on the incident.
Cellphone video circulating online shows Morales’ driver bleeding from the back of his head. Morales can be seen in the passenger’s seat holding a phone to his ear as the vehicle swerves and a woman’s voice shrieks “Duck!”
The footage shows the car’s front windshield cracked by at least three bullets and its rear windshield shattered. Morales can be heard saying, “Papacho has been shot in the head,” apparently referring to his driver.
“They are shooting at us,” Morales continues on the phone. “They shot the tire of the car and it stopped on the road.”
Morales’ claim deepens political tensions in Bolivia at a volatile moment for the cash-strapped Andean nation of 12 million.
In June, there was an apparent attempted coup by a rogue military general leading a rebellion, where armored vehicles and troops marched to the presidential palace and tried to force their way into the building. The rebellion retreated after Arce confronted the general, bringing the alleged coup attempt to a head, and ordered him to stand down. The general and other senior officers were later arrested.
Then, last month, Morales led a massive march against the government’s mismanagement of the economy that quickly devolved into street clashes with pro-government mobs. Imported goods are scarce and prices are rising. Drivers wait for hours to fill up at gas stations. The gap between the official and black-market exchange rates is widening.
Earlier this month, the feud between Morales and Arce moved to the courts as Bolivian prosecutors launched an investigation into accusations that Morales fathered a child with a 15-year-old girl in 2016, classifying their relationship as statutory rape.
Morales has dismissed the allegations as politically motivated and refused to testify in the case. Since reports surfaced of a possible arrest warrant against him, the ex-president has been holed up in the Chapare region, in central Bolivia, where supportive coca growers have kept vigilant watch to protect him from arrest.
President Arce accuses Morales of trying to undermine his administration to advance his own ambitions.
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