“I Grabbed His Mouth and Fought”: Guinea Grass Man Survives Crocodile Attack

A twenty-nine-year-old Guinea Grass man is recovering after surviving a terrifying crocodile attack while swimming at the New River Park in the village in the wee hours of Sunday morning.

Leomar Narvallez says he escaped only through a split-second.

According to Narvallez, while he was swimming at the park, a popular local bathing spot, he suddenly felt something clamp down on his head.

“I was in the river and I was swimming, and that’s when I felt like something grabbed me in my head. After that I felt like a shake, like shaking. You know when something bites you and tries to tear you? Like the crocodile, shake my head two times. I didn’t expect that to happen.”

With his head still caught in the animal’s jaws underwater, Narvallez says he made the decision to stay calm and fight rather than panic.

“I put my hand on top of my head when I felt the crocodile’s teeth, and I tried to make my head lose from his mouth.”

The attack, Narvallez says, happened in less than 20 seconds. “My head was in his mouth like for six seconds. I didn’t take long in that situation.”

He says that while he was swimming he did not see the crocodile. He added that there were other persons swimming in the river at the time of the attack.

“The only thing that I could have done for, like, five-six seconds is to fight against it so it let go of my head.” Narvallez estimates the crocodile to be between nine and ten feet. He also says that there is a bigger crocodile in the area.   “I had heard that there were two crocodiles, but I didn’t know that they were right there. They are right there near the park. I didn’t go far. I was in that area.” Narvaez says he had to jump and grab a tyre hanging from a rope to pull himself out of the water.

His friends, he says, didn’t immediately grasp how serious the situation was.

“They didn’t believe me. When they turned on the light, they realised I was spitting blood. I told them if they wanted to help me, they shouldn’t come to where I was, because I was watching what was next to me. It was just waiting for me to throw up or to fall, and maybe I would have fallen, because I was spitting a lot of blood. I told them the only way they could help me was to go find a canoe. I didn’t panic.”

Narvallez says he clung to the tyre for roughly ten minutes, bleeding, until relatives who live near the park arrived by canoe and pulled him from the water. “I have relatives who live next to the New River Park. They came running with a canoe, and that’s how they managed to get me out of there.”

He was rushed to the Northern Regional Hospital, where he was treated and released the same day, after receiving approximately twenty-eight stitches to his head. He says his hands sustained bruising during the struggle, but he suffered no other major injuries.

Now recovering at home, Narvallez says his main concern is making sure nobody else in the village ends up in his position, particularly children who regularly swim at the park throughout the day.

“Honestly, I wanted to leave a message to be very careful, because if that crocodile has already tasted blood, it’s going to be around there until they catch it and kill it. More than one person could get caught, and they might not be as lucky as I was. There are quite a few little ones who go there to bathe in the morning, during the day, and sometimes until six in the evening, and this is something dangerous. I would like to give a safety awareness to the people here in the village, especially relatives, not to send their children right now, because it’s very dangerous. If it catches a child, I don’t doubt what could happen.”