This is the astonishing moment police in South Africa swooped to airlift a huge 15ft crocodile suspected of eating a missing businessman<\/a>.<\/p>\n An officer dangling from a rope recovered the 500kg reptile<\/a> from the banks of the Komati River during a helicopter search-and-rescue mission in Mpumalanga province on Saturday.<\/p>\n Captain Johan \u201cPottie\u201d Potgieter, who was lowered from a helicopter to secure and pick up the reptile, told the News24 website: \u201cThe sharp end of a crocodile is not the best place to approach it.\u201d<\/p>\n Potgieter, a member of the national police force’s diving unit, said that body parts and shoes were found inside the animal. The remains are yet to be identified, as police hunt for a 59-year-old man who vanished after being swept away by floods last week.<\/p>\n The brave captain told the BBC<\/a> that he had never been assigned a mission like this in 38 years with the service, and that his family were happy to see him come home safely, though they did not know how dangerous the mission was until they saw the footage online.<\/p>\n “This was definitely a first and hopefully it will also be the last time…there’s really no way to prepare,\u201d he told the broadcaster.<\/p>\n Mpumalanga provincial police spokesperson Colonel Mavela Masondo told national broadcaster SABC that the missing resident, who has not been identified, disappeared after his car became stranded while trying to cross a bridge in the flooded river.<\/p>\n Drones and helicopters had led a desperate search for the man before authorities spotted several crocodiles on an island in the river, Potgieter said. One appeared to have recently eaten.<\/p>\n \u201cThe crocodile itself was lying on an island … there really was no other way to get to it except from the air,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n He said the reptile had been shot before he arrived to dangle over it on a rope. But when the team returned, they saw it had shifted onto its right side and started swimming upstream.<\/p>\n Potgieter said there were other crocodiles, still alive, circling likely due to the blood in the water until the helicopter scared them off.<\/p>\n He was only sure the animal was dead when he was lowered into the river to secure it, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I was hanging there, there was no way for me to communicate with the pilot,\u201d he said. \u201cSo irrespective of whether I changed my mind and decided not to do it, there was no way that that was going to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n He said the team was motivated by the families of the missing and deceased, offering some closure \u201cso that they can carry on with their lives\u201d.<\/p>\n The South African Police Service (SAPS) said in a statement that Potgieter had carried out a \u201chighly dangerous and complex operation\u201d, before both were flown away.<\/p>\n The officer \u201cwas hoisted from a SANPARKS helicopter into a crocodile-infested river, where he courageously secured a crocodile using a rope under extremely dangerous conditions\u201d, SAPS said in a press release, according to PEOPLE<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":471395,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[273],"tags":[715,18,440,19,17,44215,206799,133,206800,461],"class_list":{"0":"post-471394","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-crime","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-law-enforcement","14":"tag-natural-world","15":"tag-science","16":"tag-top-picture","17":"tag-wildlife"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116528146539521096","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=471394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471394\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/471395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=471394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=471394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/2026-05-04T002248Z_1405420767_RC2Y1LA0XAYQ_RTRMADP_3_SAFRICA-POLICE-CROCODILE.jpg\")
A South African police officer is airlifted while removing a euthanised crocodile, which is believed to have ingested the remains of a missing person (Reuters)<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/2026-05-03T221749Z_1076324844_RC2Y1LAGO1OJ_RTRMADP_3_SAFRICA-POLICE-CROCODILE.jpg\")
A South African police officer is airlifted while removing a euthanised crocodile (Reuters)<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/2026-05-03T221751Z_1190688958_RC2Y1LAVA6AV_RTRMADP_3_SAFRICA-POLICE-CROCODILE.jpg\")
The crocodile was believed to have eaten a missing person (Reuters)<\/p>\n