POSTED: 5:06 a.m. EDT, April 22, 2007
Story Highlights
• Crocodile shot during search for missing 9-year-old contained child's remains
• Witnesses say child had earlier tormented reptiles in park
• Police hold park keeper, who was absent at time of the attack
BEIJING, China (AP) -- A crocodile shot to death in south China during a search for a missing 9-year-old student was found to contain the child's remains, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
The crocodile was shot Saturday in a park in Beihai, a city in the Guangxi region, by investigators looking for the missing child. Investigators confirmed that human remains found in the reptile were that of the student, the report said.
The child, surnamed Liu, disappeared Friday after Liu and three other children climbed over the fence around a pool in the park that had been used to stage crocodile shows, Xinhua said.
"The children shot the animals with catapults and beat them with wooden sticks," the agency said. "One of the irritated crocodiles bit Liu's clothes and dragged him into water, where he was eaten by a swarm of crocodiles."
Snipers used pork to lure the reptiles from the pool on Saturday and shot the first one that crawled ashore, the report said.
No other details were given, and it wasn't immediately clear what would happen to the other crocodiles.
Local residents said the park's owner had hired a keeper for the crocodiles, but it was not clear why the man was not at the site when the students broke in, the report said.
The manager and the keeper were being held by police.
CNN
remember last year, there was a family of meerkats that were put down, because some stupid ass kid stuck its hand in and got bit. the mother insisted the meerkats be tested for rabies which involved killing them rather than adminster the neccesary injections to the child.
i'm not a big believer in 'survival of the fittest', but sometime nature just jumps up and holds a big neon sign.
as a kid it always seemed obvious to me that fences and railings were there for a reason. it also seemed cruel to hit any animal without provication. and failing that i never approached an animal i wasn't invited to.
and if simple stupid little old me could fucking put 2 and 2 together without the need of parental intervention (which was always on standby as it should be), then those kids can, quite frankly, go to hell.
and why were they shooting the crocks? sound like they should have shot the other kids that got away.