July 4 (UPI) — The remains of a missing 12-year-old Australian girl believed to be the victim of a crocodile attack were found Thursday, authorities confirmed.
A police official said the girl’s T-shirt was discovered Wednesday upstream at about 6:15 p.m. local time and her remains found Thursday morning in a Northern Territory waterway.
“It was particularly gruesome and a sad and devastating outcome,” NT Police Senior Sgt. Erica Gibson told Australian Broadcasting Corporation in Palumpa.
Although attacks are not common for that part of the country, the unnamed young girl was last seen Tuesday local time in Australia’s Northern Territory — home to more saltwater crocodiles than anyplace else on Earth at an estimated 100,000. She was swimming with family members at Mango Creek, in Palumpa, during a bush holiday near the remote Aboriginal town Nganmarriyanga, which is roughly a seven-hour drive southwest of Darwin in one of the northern most parts of Australia.
Gibson did confirm the young girl’s injuries were consistent with a crocodile attack. “It was an extremely difficult 36 hours for the first responders involved in the search,” she stated, adding how the grieved family are “in a state of extreme shock and disbelief.”
The girl’s disappearance was reported to Australian police at 5.30 p.m. local time on Tuesday.
A black crocodile was seen in the area, according to witnesses. But no details were given if the suspected reptile had otherwise been identified or located.
About 40 members of the public reportedly assisted 10 police officers with a foot, boat and aerial search along the “narrow, but long and winding” Mango Creek river banks.
This is now the first fatal attack in the NT since 2018, according to reports.
While Queensland has had a number of reportedly deadly crocodile attacks in recent years, there were at least two reported crocodile attacks in the Northern Territory in the last year.
A leading Australian crocodile researcher suggested a good response by the territorial government would be to fund local Indigenous groups in remote communities like the one where the girl was allegedly taken victim by the reptile in question.
Meanwhile, the territory’s chief minister says there is “always more to be done around croc safety” as she said the Northern Territory’s latest budget lists $500,000 for crocodile management efforts.
“We can’t have the crocodile population outnumber the human population in the Northern Territory,” Chief Minister Eva Lawler said. “We do need to keep our crocodile numbers under control.”