Brother Wrestles Crocodile and Holds Its Jaws to Save Nine-Year-Old Sister

A nine-year-old girl was saved from the jaws of a crocodile by her brave brother, who wrestled the beast until it let her go.

The siblings, from Kavango West in Namibia, were fetching water from the Okavango River in their village Ntara, when the crocodile attacked. Regimiya Haikera, aged nine, was seized in the reptile's jaws, and it bit into her inner thigh and the left side of her ribs, reported local news site New Era. Her brother Johannes Ndara, who is 19 years old, leaped into action immediately.

"My sister was behind me when we went downstream to fill up our buckets and I just heard her screaming from behind and when I turned around, she was caught by the crocodile. I then jumped into the water and held the crocodile by its jaws, and fought it to release her,'' Ndara told New Era.

"After that, I felt powerless and just held her in my arms and we cried at the edge of the river,'' he said.

Haikera was taken to Bunya Health Centre, and then was rushed to Rundu Intermediate Hospital. She is reportedly in a stable condition.

Crocodiles in Namibia are almost exclusively Nile crocodiles, the largest species in Africa. Responsible for hundreds of human deaths each year, Nile crocodiles can grow to 14 feet long, with some outliers having been found to be over 20 feet long. In Namibia alone, there are an estimated to be 11,000 crocodiles.

Crocodile attacks are all too common in regions populated by the reptiles, with some estimates saying that around 1,000 people are killed every year by the creatures.

In 2019 alone, Nile crocodiles killed at least 48 people in Africa, according to CrocBITE, a global crocodilian attack database. Over half of Nile crocodile attacks are thought to be fatal.

"The public should be cautious when at the riverside and with the water level rising, the visibility becomes poor and thus can't see crocodiles and people should have company and this is what helped the child who was attacked, she was rescued by her older brother," Richard Aingura, the chief warden of the Directorate of Parks and Wildlife Management, told New Era.

Aingura said that they had sent a staff member to find the crocodile so that they could capture it and move it away from human-inhabited areas.

"We are guided by the policy as well and we try by all means to limit any further danger that may be caused by the wild animal to human beings and once the crocodile tastes human blood and there are no sources of food, chances are that it can always repeat preying on humans, that's why we always try to move or get rid of it to minimize the chances of it doing it again," he said.

Other ways to avoid being involved in a crocodile attack include never swimming or entering the water in areas where crocodiles are known to be present, especially after dark, and not preparing food or washing dishes at the water's edge.

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