A British backpacker dragged underwater by a crocodile has told how she stared into its eyes and thought she was going to die.
She nearly became one of the 1,000 people killed every year by crocodiles, making the cold-blooded predators more deadly than sharks.
Victims are drowned in "death rolls" or torn apart, with their remains later discovered in the crocodile’s stomach.
Melissa Laurie, 28, a zookeeper, “knew she was in trouble” when she spotted the 10ft crocodile in the Manialtepec Lagoon in Mexico and tried to swim away, according to The Sun.
She said: “I remember screaming underwater. And in that moment my mind was racing because I thought I was going to die. I thought I was never going to see my family or my sister again.”
Shortly after entering the water at 5.30pm, Melissa watched in horror as the crocodile’s head emerged just 15 metres away.
She said: “I screamed: ‘S***! It’s a crocodile, we need to turn back immediately.’
"I saw its eyes and the shape of its head just above the water and in that moment, I thought, ‘We are in trouble’.
"My left hand got bitten and I just got dragged underwater.”
Melissa was taken into a death roll — a violent twisting which the reptiles use to wrench limbs out of sockets and kill prey.
Her twin sister Georgia punched the reptile repeatedly in the face and pulled her to safety by her hair.
She survived the attack but suffered deep bites to her body, legs, hands and wrists, and was placed in an induced coma after developing sepsis.
The Brit has been left with an eight-inch scar on her abdomen following surgery.
But others have not been so lucky. The remains of a fourteen-year-old boy were retrieved from inside a crocodile's belly after he was eaten alive.
In 2020, Ricky Ganya, 14, was collecting snails on a riverbank in Kuching, Malaysia, when a crocodile clamped its jaws onto his ankle and dragged him underwater.
The boy's aunt witnessed the horrifying attack and called for help. Emergency services then used a chicken as bait to lure the 14-foot reptile out of the water.
An officer from the Sarawak Fire and Rescue Operations Centre said: "The crocodile was pulled onto the shore where its stomach was checked.
“Sadly, there were human remains inside and these were identified as belonging to the missing teenager.''
In June last year, Fatimah, 45, was fishing in North Kalimantan, Indonesia, when her friends watched a crocodile clamp its jaws round her body and drag her underwater.
The 19-foot crocodile was caught the next day after angry residents hunted it down. Parts of Fatimah's body was later cut out of the crocodile’s stomach, and the remains of her head was found nearby.
In another notorious case, a 16-foot crocodile known as Osama, named after the terrorist, killed 80 people including children in Uganda between 1991 and 2005.
The 75-year-old reptile wiped out a tenth of Luganga village’s population. He would attack fishing boats in Lake Victoria, forcing them to capsize and then taking children.
Villagers said the creature was "immortal" or even “Satan himself".
Paul Kyewalyanga claimed he and his brother Peter were fishing in a boat when Osama attacked.
Paul added: “Peter was clutching the side screaming. They fought for about five minutes until I heard a tearing sound.
“Peter shouted, ‘He’s broken my leg.’ Then he let go and was dragged into the lake.
“A few days later we found his head and his arm.”
In another case, an eight-year-old boy was mauled to death by a crocodile just metres from his family home in Malaysia. Rescuers found his body in the water in December 2020.
The body of a boy, eight, was cut from a croc's stomach after the 26ft-long beast swallowed him whole in Indonesia.
Dimas Mulkan Saputra, 8, was dragged into murky water by a 26-foot crocodile in the Tempakul River, East Kalimantan, in Indonesia while fishing with his father Subliansyah in March 2021.
Subliansyah punched the reptile to try to make it swim away, but it swallowed Dimas whole, and was found the next day with his body in its stomach.
