A harrowing video clip has emerged that captures the moment a giant 18-foot-long crocodile carrying a man's lifeless body in its jaws through a lagoon in Mexico. The man reportedly ignored warnings not to go swimming in that area due to the presence of crocodiles in a dangerous lagoon in Mexico's northeastern state of Tamaulipas.
The man ignored the warnings and went swimming when he was attacked and killed by a ferocious crocodile. The video shared by journalist Porfirio Ibarra on Thursday shows several frightened bystanders filming the crocodile carrying the naked body of the man on the typically calm waters of Laguna del Carpintero in Tampico, Tamaulipas.
Spine-Chilling Moment
Visitors had gathered to watch turtles swim at the Laguna del Carpintero in Tampico on Thursday, but were horrified to see the giant crocodile swimming past them with the man's body in its jaws. The chilling video shows shocked visitors watching the crocodile and gasping.
One visitor continuously exclaims in Spanish, "Oh f-k," as the enormous crocodile slowly glides past with the half-naked body which is already missing his left lower limb and foot. The unnamed man is slowly being carried face-down with the croc's teeth locked on his right shoulder and side of the head.
According to experts, the reptile appears to be at least three times the size of the man, suggesting it could be up to 18 feet long. When the police arrived, they found that the crocodile had sucked the body into a sewer.
According to the police, the deceased was a male who was maybe in his 20s. According to the Mexican publication Proceso, local firefighters in the Tampico district of Volantn found the man and the animal in a manhole about a block from the park.
The first responders had to take an hour to remove the metal sewage cover before they could tie a rope around the crocodile's jaws and bring him out. The man's body was later removed from the sewage system by the group.
Too Adventurous
The man, who has not been identified, was reportedly attacked because he disregarded caution signs posted at the park telling visitors not to swim.
"Presumably the man entered the lagoon to swim and was attacked by the animal," wrote Ibarra, a local magazine editor who is also a stringer for the Associated Press.
Jorge Becerril, another journalist who posted the video, claimed that authorities later took what was left of the man's body from the water and "protected" the crocodile. "In that lagoon, it is expressly forbidden to go swimming," he wrote.
Numerous individuals have been victims of crocodile attacks in the lagoon, which is well known for these attacks.
The incident comes two weeks after a man named Fernando Martínez fought a crocodile for nearly 25 minutes after the reptile attacked and bit his eight-year-old daughter María Martínez as it tried to pull her under a lagoon in the Tamaulipas town of Altamira.
The incident happened on the afternoon of August 3 when Mara Martnez was standing over the side of the lake while Fernando Martnez was out fishing.
"I was fighting with the crocodile for about 25 minutes, several times he pulled my daughter to submerge her," the brave father recalled in an interview with digital news outlet Tamaulipas Express. "I tried to open his snout so that he would release her, he bit her back and one arm, at one point the animal needed to breathe well and it was like that he let her go, I took the opportunity to take get her off."
A woman apparently died in June at the same Tampico lagoon while doing some beachside laundry.
