A crocodile handler spent more than an hour fighting for his life with his legs trapped inside the beast’s powerful jaws, clinging desperately to the edge of a pool as horrified witnesses struggled to save him.
The experienced animal keeper died on Sept. 6 after an encounter with one of the crocodiles he had spent about two years caring for turned deadly at Adventure Park in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea.
A day earlier, the handler, identified online as Kupi Rapura, had entered the animal’s enclosure with a chicken for a feeding demonstration when the crocodile suddenly turned on him.
“He brought the chicken to the fence and the crocodile attacked the person and tried to bring him into the pool,” Gibson John, who witnessed the incident, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).
Croc grips man’s legs
Video filmed through the enclosure fence captured parts of the terrifying struggle, showing Rapura being taken to the ground before the view becomes partially obscured.
When he is clearly visible again, Rapura is in the water at the edge of the pool, desperately clinging on while the crocodile remains at his side, its jaws reportedly locked around his legs.
People gathered outside the enclosure searching for a way to help, with one person passing Rapura a pole through the fence. Later, another man climbed into the enclosure and can be seen reaching down from the pool’s edge to grip the keeper by the arms, later holding his hand as the Rapura appeared to be weakening.
Still, the crocodile refused to release him.
