Mobile UPI  |   About UPI  |   UPI en Español  |   UPI Arabic  |   UPIU  |   My Account
Search:
Go

Australian diver knew crocodile risk

|
|
 
  
Published: Sept. 30, 2005 at 3:50 PM

DARWIN, Australia, Sept. 30 (UPI) -- Rangers say that a commercial diver killed by a crocodile off Australia's northern coast was aware of the risk he was taking.

Russell Butel, owner of an aquarium supply business in Darwin, was collecting fish and coral from the waters off the Coburg Peninsula when he was attacked Thursday.

"The locals here are very reluctant to go near the water and are fairly crocodile-aware, which I hope everyone is after such an incident," Peter Fitzgerald, who found Butel's body, told the Brisbane Courier News. "It's just a sad event."

Butel's diving partner, Nick Sherwood, saw the attack from a dinghy and marked the site with an electronic beacon, which aided in the recovery of the body.

The Australian Broadcasting Corp. reports that Butel's skull was crushed in the crocodile's powerful jaws. Attempts to track the crocodile were not successful, and Fitzgerald said it would be impossible to find.

The attack was the second fatal one in the Northern Territory in four days, raising calls for a revival of crocodile hunting.

Topics: Peter Fitzgerald
© 2005 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Any reproduction, republication, redistribution and/or modification of any UPI content is expressly prohibited without UPI's prior written consent.

Order reprints
  
Join the conversation
Most Popular Collections
Notable deaths of 2012 Scripps National Spelling Bee AmfAR Cinema Against AIDS gala
Indianapolis 500 Presidential Medal of Freedom Memorial Day around the nation
Additional Top News Stories
1 of 20
Singer Janelle Monae arrives at the 2012 MTV Movie Awards in Universal City, California
View Caption
Singer Janelle Monae arrives for the MTV Movie Awards at the Gibson Amphitheatre in Universal City, California. UPI/Jim Ruymen
fark
"Good News" clubs teach children in public schools the Biblical importance of killing all nonbelievers...
Five arrested in prostitution sting. Article lists their names, ages and distance from a church
Photoshop this power tower technician
Driving drunk and unlicensed, with a kid not even buckled let alone in a safety seat, en route to...
Man killed in Spencer fire. The lava lamps must have ignited the blacklight posters
Passenger jet crashes into apartment building in Nigerian capitol. Over 150 princes, bank officials,...