CHARLOTTE, NC (Mark Price/The Charlotte Observer) - A 25-year-old woman who had her arm ripped off by an 8-foot crocodile did not let that complication stop her wedding five days later.
Photos of the ceremony show Zanele Ndlovu in her wedding gown with a mass of bandages wrapped around what was left of her right arm.
Ndlovu, a former national tennis player, married charity worker Jamie Fox of Kent, England, on Sunday at Mater Dei Hospital in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, where she is recovering, reported The Sun.
"In one week we went from shock and agony to a truly amazing experience," groom Jamie Fox, 27, told the Associated Press Monday.
The Chronicle of Zimbabwesays Ndlovu was attacked by the crocodile while she was in an inflatable canoe, boating with future in-laws on the Zambezi River.
"The crocodile just jumped out of the water and bit a chunk of my arm together with the side of the boat," she told the Chronicle.
"The canoe started deflating and it all happened so fast. The crocodile bit me again and pulled me into the water....I was struggling with the crocodile that was trying to pull me to the bottom of the river."
She told the Chronicle her future husband grabbed her by the waistand "rained blows on the crocodile," freeing her.
Jamie Fox told the Chronicle that it happened so fast, there are conflicting accounts of whether he or one of the guides freed her from the crocodile's grip.
"I was shouting, trying to save her. She was not complaining of pain when we managed to pull her out of the water, maybe because of the shock," her husband told the Associated Press Monday.
Adventure Zone tour owner Brent Williams told NewsDay that Ndlovuwas flown out by helicopter and rushed to a local hospital where doctors amputated part of her arm. "We were hoping the doctors would save her arm, but that was not to be," Jamie Fox told the Associate Press.
The couple had their wedding planned for a sports club in Bulawayo, but adjusted at the last minute to a hospital chapel, with 60 of their closest family and friends, reported The Sun.
The couple plan to live in the United Kingdom and Jamie Fox said they will continue their "outdoorsy" pastimes, the site reported. “But I’m not sure if we’ll be canoeing again," he told The Sun.
