This is the shocking moment a grandfather in Indonesia was bitten by a rescued crocodile that locals believed was tame.
The unnamed pensioner and other tourists had visited the ‘lucky’ reptile that was saved from a flood last week and kept at a local theme park for devotees to make offerings.
Believing the crocodile was docile, the elderly man reached out to offer some food – only for the predator to viciously latch onto his arm and yank him into the water.
Footage shows terrified onlookers screaming as the beast thrashed the old man around in its jaws before letting go at the Cimory Dairyland centre.
Firefighters later arrived to take the elderly man to a hospital with a severely injured arm in South Sulawesi on Monday evening.
Onlooker Siti Aisyah said: ‘The grandfather was bitten by a crocodile when he wanted to give him food. The residents immediately evacuated him and he was rushed to a hospital because his hand was badly injured.’
The local fire department chief Hasanuddin said the animal was caught in a flooded residential area on February 12 before being kept at the Cimory tourist attraction, which also includes mini-windmills, dairy animals and farming exhibitions.
Bosses had hoped that locals would visit in order to give donations to the croc. However, they have now let the animal be released by wildlife workers.
Hasanuddin said: ‘When we arrived, residents were already crowded at the location and directed us to the victim, so the evacuation process was quick.
‘We received information that this crocodile was previously seen near a landfill and had laid eggs on land. If there is one female crocodile, there is likely a male crocodile still lurking around.’
The horrific incident is the latest in a spate of crocodile attacks in Indonesia, after a mother and son were mauled to death by the same vicious beast earlier this month.
Alvina Doki, 64, had been washing her family’s clothes in the Ledewero River on Wednesday afternoon when the beast emerged from the turbid waters and attacked her in the East Nusa Tenggara province.
Her husband Gabriel Sinyo, 60, said he swung around upon hearing a ‘suspicious rippling sound’ – only to see his wife trapped in the croc’s jaws.
He pelted the large reptile with rocks he scooped up from the riverbank, but said it dragged Alvina away into the depths.
The family reported the attack to local police and a search team was dispatched to the area.
Volunteers and villagers, including Alvina’s son Wilsilius Lomi, 35, were still combing the river later that evening.
However, the sinister predator’s rampage continued that night, when it returned to the river and pounced on Alvina’s frantic son, who had separated himself from the group in a desperate attempt to cover more search area.
Horrified residents watched as the crocodile snapped up the young man before he disappeared underwater.
His body was found floating in the river the following morning.
In a separate instance in December, a 13 ft reptile pounced on mother-of-four Nurhawati Zihura, 46, while she washed her feet in the seawater next to her coastal village in North Sumatra.
Shocked locals heard her screams but could only watch as the beast thrashed her body in a haunting ‘death roll’ to disorientate her.
The croc then dragged away the housewife as she disappeared below the surface close to the Deaa Orahili Beach in the Pulau-Pulau Batu district of South Nias Regency.
Shockingly, the animal emerged around an hour later clutching Nurhawati’s lifeless body in its jaws.
Footage showed how locals threw dead chickens into the water to distract the deadly animal and make it release the body.
The Indonesian archipelago is home to 14 types of crocs – with a large population of extremely large and violent estuarine crocodiles that flourish in the region’s climate.
Conservationists believe that crocodiles have been driven further inland closer to villages due to overfishing reducing the crocodiles’ natural food supplies combined with habitat loss from the development of coastal areas into farms.
With uneducated locals in the developing country still using rivers for bathing and primitive fishing, the deadly combination of factors has led to rising numbers of crocodile attacks.
This article by Sabrina Penty was first published by The Daily Mail on 18 February 2025. Lead Image: Crocodile attacks are on the rise in Indonesia (Getty Stock Images).
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