About 40 crocodiles killed a Cambodian man on Friday after he fell into an enclosure at his family’s reptile farm, police said.
Luan Nam, 72, was trying to pull the crocodile out of the cage where it had laid its eggs when it grabbed a stick he was using as a cutting board and pulled it in.
The main group of reptiles then turned on him, tearing his body to pieces and leaving the concrete enclosure at the farm in Siem Reap covered in blood.
“While he was kicking the crocodile out of the egg-laying cage, the crocodile attacked the stick, causing it to fall into the enclosure,” Siem Reap commune police chief Mei Sawry told AFP.
“Then the other crocodiles attacked him until he died,” he said, adding that the remains of Luan Nam’s body were covered with bite marks.
One of the man’s hands was bitten off and swallowed by crocodiles, he said.
Luan Nam was president of the local crocodile breeders’ association, but his family may now sell their stock after years of urging him to stop breeding the reptiles, commune chief Mae Samet told AFP.
Local media reported that the victim was from Po Bantay Chey village.
A two-year-old girl was killed and eaten by crocodiles in 2019 when she entered a family reptile farm in the same village, the police chief said.
There are several crocodile farms around Siem Reap, the gateway town to the famous ruins of Angkor Wat.
Reptiles are kept for their eggs, skin and meat, as well as for the trade of young.
The incident was at least the second person killed by a crocodile this month. In early May the remains of a missing 65-year-old fisherman in Australia were found inside two crocodiles.
Last year there were two American tourists wounded by a crocodile at a resort in Mexico when one went swimming in the ocean at night and the other went into the water to help him.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/man-killed-40-crocodiles-enclosure-cambodia/
