Crocodile kills pastor as he baptises followers on lake in Ethiopia !

Reptile reportedly leapt from the water and grabbed Pastor Docho
Eshete as he moved on to the second person in a mass baptism of 80
followers

A lakeside baptism ceremony ended in disaster when a large
crocodile leapt from the water and killed the pastor, it has been
reported.

Docho Eshete was allegedly grabbed by the crocodile soon after
he started a mass baptism for 80 people on the shores of Lake Abaya
in southern Ethiopia.

“He baptised the first person and he passed on to another one,”
local resident Ketema Kairo told the BBC. “All of a sudden, a
crocodile jumped out of the lake and grabbed the pastor.”

Pastor Docho was said to have been bitten on his legs, back and
hands.

As his horrified congregation looked on, local fishermen
reportedly struggled to rescue him. It was said they succeeded only
in using their nets to prevent the crocodile from taking the
45-year-old’s body into the lake, near the city of Arba Minch.

The crocodile is understood to have escaped.

Lake Abaya, Ethiopia’s second largest lake, is said to be
beautiful, but the Lonely Planet travel guide warns: “It has a
large population of crocodiles, which are said to be aggressive
towards people and animals because the lake has few fish, their
preferred food.”

It is likely that the reptile that killed Pastor Docho was a
Nile Crocodile. Some Nile Crocodiles can grow to be up to six
metres (20ft) long while weighing as much as 1,000kg (1 ton), and
some estimates suggest the species is responsible for more than 300
attacks on humans in Africa every year.

It is thought to be responsible for more attacks on people than
any other crocodile species, and it has been said that the Nile
Crocodile causes the third highest number of large-animal-related
human fatalities in Africa, after hippos and lions.

One study has noted that for the Nile Crocodile, “an
opportunistic, ambush predator”, humans are “less powerful and
slower in water than any similar-sized wild mammal and therefore
easy prey.

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