A man has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder after a three-year-old boy ended up in a crocodile enclosure, Cambridgeshire police said.<\/p>\n
The force said officers were called to Johnsons of Old Hurst zoo in Huntingdonshire at 1.24pm over \u201creports of an incident involving a three-year-old boy, during which he ended up in the crocodile enclosure\u201d.<\/p>\n
The boy was taken to Addenbrooke\u2019s hospital with serious injuries and was described by police as being in a critical but stable condition.<\/p>\n
The force said a 30-year-old man from Norfolk had been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do not believe the man arrested and the child are known to each other,\u201d DI Verity McCann said in a statement. \u201cAt this stage we are speaking to people who were at the zoo at the time of this distressing incident to understand more about the circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n
Officials with Johnsons did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
Ben Obese-Jecty, the MP for Huntingdon, said he had been liaising with senior officers, who were treating it as a critical incident.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is now a live criminal investigation and I would ask people to refrain from speculation online,\u201d he said. \u201cThe police will provide an update with further information in due course. My thoughts are with the young victim and his family during a hugely traumatic and difficult time.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to its website, the zoo is home to \u201cover 100 fascinating animals\u201d including African lions, Bengal tigers and crocodiles. The zoo\u2019s two largest crocodiles are called Romeo and Cuddles, the zoo says on its Facebook page.<\/p>\n
The zoo wrote in celebration of International Crocodile Day on Wednesday: \u201cCrocodilians are at the very core of our history, our passion and the journey that has shaped Johnsons zoological gardens into what it is today. These incredible animals have inspired generations of our family and continue to fascinate visitors from all over the country.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder after a three-year-old boy ended up in a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":645797,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-645796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=645796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645796\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/645797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=645796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=645796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=645796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}