A chilling video has emerged from inside a crocodile enclosure in which a three-year-old boy was attacked last month. A boy has undergone seven surgeries after he was allegedly thrown into the enclosure at the Tropical House at Johnsons of Old Hurst, near Huntingdon, on 18 June.
After the incident, Cambridgeshire Police said a 30-year-old man from Norfolk was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder and bailed until September 18. Officers said he was “assessed as not being fit for interview”.
The video, from last year, shows the enclosure where crocodiles are kept with owner Andy Johnson saying: “I personally believe it’s one of the greatest spectacles in nature”. He also went on to say one could hear the crocodile “right across the farm,” adding “it echoes like the roar of a lion”.
In a message shared earlier this month, through GoFundMe, the family said the boy had his seventh surgery at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, where he was taken after the incident. The message also read: “In that surgery, the surgeons completed a nerve graft on his left arm.
“They harvested a nerve from his leg to replace part of the nerve that was missing in his left arm. Over time, this nerve will hopefully embed and help our son to regain some function in his left hand. We won’t know whether the nerve graft has been successful until tests can be carried out in a few months time.”
The fundraising page also added the boy’s condition “is now stable, but he faces a long road to recovery”. Andy and Tracey Johnson, who run Johnsons of Old Hurst, said the incident had been “one of the most distressing” their family and staff had ever experienced.
The Tropical House at zoo and farm shop Johnsons of Old Hurst in Cambridgeshire, which includes the crocodile area, was temporarily closed “out of respect to the family”. It’s now fully reopened. Mrs Johnson, the zoo’s co-owner, reportedly jumped into the enclosure to save the child.