An alligator reportedly halted a murder investigation at a Brazilian watercourse on Thursday, June 3, after it dragged and made off with a dead man’s body.
The incident reportedly happened at the Arroio Fundo watercourse, in an area to the west of Rio de Janeiro, on June 3. Police and firemen rushed to the waterway after reports that an unidentified man's corpse was seen floating along the river.
However, when law enforcement reached the scene, the dead body was nowhere to be found, reported The Mirror.
Video footage that later emerged showed the unidentified man’s corpse floating on the surface of the body of water as an alligator swam around it. At one point in the recording, the reptile brushed its nose against the remains. The alligator reportedly later dragged the body to the bottom of the river.
The corpse was finally recovered around 24 hours later when firemen returned the next day to continue their search, reported The Sun.
The responders revealed that they managed to recover the corpse without sustaining any injuries or attacks from the alligator, despite the fact that the beast was still swimming around in the water as they fished the remains out of the watercourse.
The recovered body was immediately taken to the Legal Medical Institute (IML) to undergo an official autopsy as part of their investigation into the death.
“We are used to seeing alligators in that area, generally while rescuing other animals, so we already knew how to deal with situations like this," a local fireman told the media.
The cause of the man’s death is reportedly still under investigation. Authorities have yet to release updates on the autopsy results or commented on the extent of the damage brought on by the alligator biting and dragging the body to the bottom of the river.
Alligators are known for dragging their victims below the surface of the water to kill them by drowning before consumption. The cold-blooded reptiles are also known to store their kills underwater for safekeeping. The firemen claimed that the body was still mostly intact when they recovered it.
In a similar but unrelated incident, a 50-year-old man named G Ramulu of Sangareddy district, Telangana, India reportedly died of a crocodile attack, close to the banks of River Manjeera on Feb. 28, the Deccan Chronicle reported.
Ramulu was last seen grazing his cattle near the river when one of his buffaloes strayed into the water. As Ramulu went after the animal to lead it back to land, he passed by a crocodile’s nest with eggs in it. The mother crocodile seemingly felt threatened and attacked the man, violently dragging Ramulu into the water.
The villagers reportedly refused to have a postmortem examination done on the recovered body.
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