Namibian police have awarded a woman a trophy for bravery after saving her husband from the jaws of a crocodile, the newspaper The Namibian reported Monday.

Elizabeth Shintangu, now 29, was doing laundry in the Kavango River near Rundu in the north-east while her husband, Matheus Kativa, was bathing in it in 2016.

Suddenly, Kativa felt like “a car had fallen on top of me,” he told the newspaper. “I screamed for help, and, the next thing, I saw my wife on top of the reptile, fighting it.

“Then it let go of me, and by that time my lower arm had been severed,” the farmer added.

Before the couple had time to swim back to the river bank, the crocodile returned and grabbed Kativa again. “The water was all red with blood. I then saw his face as he waved good-bye,” Shintangu recalled.

She pulled him back from the crocodile’s jaws, but the reptile launched a third attack. Shintangu’s screams alerted people from a nearby village who pulled the couple out of the river.

“[M]en must see how prepared our women are to save us from danger,” said Samuel Mbambo, governor of Kavango East region. (dpa/NAN)