After a day and an evening wherein the couple tried to make him confess and reveal the poachers’ routes into the park, he stated, Mr. Owens drove him to an airstrip.

“‘Mutondo, today the crocodiles are going to eat you,’” Mr. Mutondo stated Mr. Owens informed him.

He stated Mr. Owens instructed him to sit down on a internet, and bewildered, he adopted orders, watching as Mr. Owens and a scout, Tom Kotela, hooked up it to a cable, after which began the helicopter. Mr. Mutondo stated he discovered himself lifting off the bottom, caught within the internet.

“That’s when I knew I’d been put in a cage,” he stated.

He stated they flew over scrubby timber, after which alongside the swirling Mwaleshi River. Mr. Owens introduced the helicopter low over the water, Mr. Mutondo stated, then nonetheless decrease. Petrified, Mr. Mutondo stated he seemed down, and noticed crocodiles and hippos. He stated he was solely a yard or so above their jaws.

“I just knew I was going to die,” he stated.

But he was not dunked. He stated Mr. Owens flew again to the airstrip, and after releasing him, informed him that he was a really courageous man and that he wished them to work collectively. He remembered Mr. Owens saying, “That was just training I was putting you through.”

Mr. Mutondo stated, “I never believed that.”

Mr. Owens denied the incident ever occurred.

“Occasionally, I transported gear under the chopper and on one occasion assisted some game scouts to cross a river with a sling under the helicopter,” he stated through electronic mail. “I never once slung poachers under the helicopter.”