A 24-year-old man was snatched by a crocodile in front of at least 15 onlookers as he swam across a northern Australian river with a friend, police said Sunday.
Northern Territory police said the man was with a group celebrating a birthday at the Mary River Wilderness Retreat, about 110 kilometres (70 miles) from Darwin, on Saturday when he decided to plunge into the water.
"They were watching him swim across," senior sergeant Geoff Bahnert told AFP of the group.
"And they just saw a crocodile with him in its jaws."
Police conducted a search for the man, but were unsuccessful. The search was continuing Sunday, Bahnert said, adding that the largest crocodile at the site had been shot and killed as a precaution.
Reports suggested the men had ignored warnings not to swim in the river because of the risk of a crocodile attack.
"We tell people to stay away from the water, they obviously went against this (and) a man was taken," an employee of the resort, Erin Bayard, told News Corp Australia.
"We say to everybody it's full of crocs. It's one of the most populated rivers in the Territory, every couple of kilometres there is a large croc."
Saltwater crocodiles, which can grow up to seven metres (23 feet) long and weigh more than a tonne, are a common feature of Australia's tropical north.
They have been protected since the 1970s and their numbers have increased steadily since, along with the number of human encounters.
In December, a nine-year-old boy was taken by a four-metre crocodile while swimming in the Northern Territory, one month after a seven-year-old girl went missing while swimming, also in the north.
Florida officials said Saturday evening they hadn't found the body of the man swallowed by a sinkhole two days earlier, and planned to stop looking.
A somber-faced county administrator told reporters in Seffner, Fla., that the now-60-foot-deep sinkhole, which forced other families in the Tampa-area neighborhood to evacuate, was simply too deep and too dangerous for efforts to continue.
"At this point it's really not possible to recover the body," Hillsborough County Administrator Mike Merrill said after extending his condolences to the family of 37-year-old Jeff Bush.
Even before officials called off the rescue efforts, Bush's brother Jeremy had begun to have a painful realization: The last thing he would ever hear from his brother were screams — and the muffled cries for help that came from the chasm that claimed him.
"I really don't think they are going to be able to find him," Jeremy told Reuters on Saturday. He "will be there forever."
Jeremy told reporters he woke up Thursday night to something that sounded like a car crash. Then came a scream. By the time he got to his brother's room, the sinkhole had already swallowed Jeff's bed and dresser. Jeremy jumped into the giant opening.
"The hole was still caving in, but I didn't care," he said. "I just wanted my brother, man."