It was one wild animal
When Georgia saw her twin sister Melissa dragged under water by a 10ft crocodile, her reaction was primal – she leaped in and punched it with all her might. As she is honoured for her courage, both sisters relive their extraordinary ordeal
FOR the past two years, twins Georgia and Melissa Laurie have celebrated a special secondary birthday on June 6. There is a cake with candles, and a sense the celebration is, if anything, more significant than their ‘real’ birthday, marking a reforging of their extraordinary bond.
Because it was on June 6 three years ago that Georgia rescued her twin from certain death following a terrifying crocodile attack in a Mexican lagoon.
Georgia plunged into the water and not once but twice confronted the 10ft, 150kg reptile, punching it repeatedly on the nose while trying to keep her drowning twin’s head above water.
‘I was fighting for someone I loved,’ she says. ‘I remember thinking we had so many memories to make together in the future and nothing was going to take that away from us.
‘It was primal, visceral. I was literally screaming “get off my f****** sister”.’
It is little wonder, given this exemplary bravery, that Georgia’s courage made headlines around the world. And now it is to receive royal recognition after it was announced that the 31-year-old will be among the first candidates to be given a King’s Gallantry Award, newly minted by King Charles to recognise acts of supreme civilian courage.
Needless to say both twins are thrilled, the medal a final proud marker on a sibling journey which, they reveal, has navigated a number of bumps along the way.
‘For a few years there was a bit of a wedge between Mel and me, because I was in a difficult relationship with a man who tried to isolate me from my family,’ says Georgia now. ‘I felt like we’d lost so much time together, and I wasn’t going to lose any more chances to make memories.’
Their closeness is certainly unmistakable during our interview. Seated side by side, they turn to each other frequently and on occasion finish each other’s sentences.
Identical at birth — today Georgia is one inch taller, with longer hair — they were always close, although they developed distinct personalities growing up alongside older sister Hannah, 36, with mum Sue and their telecommunications consultant father Sean.
‘Georgia is more outgoing and confident, the one who would get into scrapes, and Melissa is more reserved, although she’s grown in confidence as she’s got older,’ Sue, 64, recalls. ‘They’re definitely different in personality and people say they balance each other out.’
THESE differences, Melissa reflects, played in their favour during the attack. ‘Georgia has struggled with her breathing when she’s overly anxious, so I think she might have drowned if she had been attacked, and I am not sure I would have had Georgia’s instinct to fight.’
Either way, both confide they have always been sensitive to each other’s pain, relating an incident when, as children, one twin touched a cactus and the other said ‘ow’ (although neither can remember which way round).
After school, Georgia qualified as a dive master and a teacher of English to foreign students. Melissa studied animal management at college and went on to work at the famous Longleat, animal park, although both also spent time together working as cabin crew for BA. By then,
Georgia had become involved with a man who not only cheated on her but also, over time, isolated her from her family.
For her part, Sue recalls Melissa’s dismay at what she saw as her twin’s increasing distance: ‘But of course, that wasn’t the problem. It was very difficult.’
When the relationship ended, the twins seized the opportunity to reconnect, travelling to India before opting for an extended trip to Mexico in early 2021. Planning to return in time for Hannah’s wedding in November, they flew into Cancun in March and embarked on the ‘Gringo Trail’, a popular travel route.
They spent four weeks in the pretty highland town of San Cristobal before heading to Puerto Escondido, a resort on Mexico’s Pacific coast. Today, Melissa recalls how she and Georgia argued not long after arrival.
‘Georgia was staying out late, and I wanted for us to get more early nights and to make more of the day. I think we just got burnt out, didn’t we?’ she says.
Georgia in turn says the row proved something of an ‘epiphany’ and she recalls messaging her family in its wake to apologise for being out of touch. ‘I said I was going to try a lot harder now,’ she recalls. ‘And then obviously we went on this trip.’
The trip was billed as a day in nature, including birdwatching and a boat excursion, alongside the chance to swim in the Manialtepec Lagoon. Hosted by a guide — as it turns out unlicensed — Georgia recalls him assuring them there were no crocodiles.
And so it was that the twins, together with two brothers they had befriended called Ani and Gopal, started swimming in the lagoon’s clear water around 5.30pm under a bright blue sky. Their guide was elsewhere with others on the trip.
Not long afterwards, one of the brothers spotted something in the distance.
‘It looked like a log,’ recalls Melissa, who was closest to it. ‘Then I could make out a head and eyes as it started gliding very quickly towards us through the water.’
Realising it was a crocodile, the panic-stricken group swam as fast as they could towards land, Melissa bringing up the rear. ‘You could feel the fear in the air,’ says Georgia. ‘Just this intense sense of peril. I remember thinking there was no way we would all get out alive.’
As Georgia continued swimming frantically for safety, Ani had arrived at a bankside and was pulling Melissa up with one hand — at which point the crocodile appeared from underneath, bit Melissa’s other hand which was still in the water and dragged her underneath. ‘I had my arm locked in its jaws and it was literally thrashing me around in the water,’ Melissa recalls now.
‘I remember thinking I was never going to see my family again, what a horrible way to die and how will Georgia repatriate my body. Then the lights went out.’
Today, Georgia can still remember her sister’s chilling screams. ‘I honestly thought that was it, she was dead,’ she recalls. Yet despite every bone in her body telling her to flee, another instinct was stronger. I thought even if she was dead, I can’t leave her body, I had to find where she was.’
Georgia clambered on to some nearby mangroves to get a better view but, unable to spot Melissa, returned to the edge of the water, where she heard one of the brothers shout that they could see a body.
‘And then suddenly Mel just floated very slowly round the corner into me, face down,’ she says. Screaming her name, Georgia turned her sister over, to find her
unresponsive. ‘She then started flailing her arms and legs about like she was having a seizure,’ Georgia recalls. ‘I was desperately trying to get her to calm down, worried she was going to alert the crocodile again.’
Too late: it was already on its way, swimming towards them at speed — but this time Georgia was determined to meet it head on.
‘I went into a frenzy, like one wild animal fighting another,’ she says. ‘I’d heard you should punch a shark, so I did the same on the crocodile’s snout, it was like hitting steel.’
To her astonishment, the crocodile suddenly moved away, but the relief did not last long: as an exhausted Georgia tried to work out how to drag her sister’s body to a nearby boat, keeping her head out of water, she saw the crocodile return again.
‘I remember thinking this was it, that both of us might not survive,’ she says.
The crocodile grabbed a barely conscious Melissa, plunging her into a death roll — in which the reptile spins its prey under water to disorientate and drown it — while biting her thigh and buttocks.
‘I was punching it over and over again and then it released Melissa and bit my wrist, but before it did it showed its teeth and gave this really loud hiss, like a direct display of its power. It was terrifying but I kept punching it and eventually it let me go.’
To Georgia’s dazed amazement, the crocodile swam away as a boat — summoned by Ani, who had also called the emergency services — arrived alongside them. Dragged on board, Georgia realised she was bleeding from her wrist and her sister was coughing up blood.
‘She was slumped over my shoulders, and drifting in and out of consciousness,’ she recalls. ‘I wanted to try and keep her present, so I sang Stand By Me and Bob Marley’s Three Little Birds over and over.’
Melissa, meanwhile, was convinced she was dying. ‘It was almost like Georgia’s fight had ended but I had my own fight now. I could feel death hovering above me, just waiting,’ she recalls. ‘I said to her, quite a few times, “Georgia, hug me, I’m dying”.’
After a 30-minute boat trip the twins were met by paramedics who rushed both to hospital. ‘Melissa was wailing out in pain at this point,’ recalls Georgia. ‘I went in to see her and she looked up at me with these glazed eyes.’
Doctors told Georgia that her twin had an open fracture on her wrist, that there was something wrong with her abdomen, and that she had fluid on her lungs which could lead to pneumonia.
By this point, Melissa cannot remember much except being desperate to be put out of her pain. ‘On the boat pain was my friend, keeping me alive, but when I reached the hospital, all I wanted was for the pain to stop,’ she says.
Her wish was granted in the grimmest way: several hours later Melissa had to be put in an induced coma after her breathing deteriorated.
It was left to Georgia to break the news to her parents, making the call at 4am Irish time.
‘Mum answered and I asked if she was sitting down, then told her Melissa had been attacked by a crocodile. And there was a long pause, and no one really reacted. I think they were just in shock,’ she says.
WITH complex Covid rules in place it would take an anguished Sue and Sean a week to arrive at Puerto Escondido, during which time Georgia — herself in a different hospital room on an intravenous drip to ward off infection — had to face more devastating hurdles alone.
Not long after being admitted, she was told Melissa had developed sepsis and had only a 50-50 chance of surviving.
‘Every time a doctor walked past my heart would sink, I was so scared they would tell me she was gone.’
Only on day five, when doctors said they were going to take out Melissa’s breathing tube, did Georgia feel able to breathe easier herself.
Their subsequent reunion was as emotional as you would expect. ‘When I first walked into the room and saw Melissa she burst out crying,’ Georgia says. ‘That feeling of reuniting was absolutely amazing.’
Melissa says she just could not believe what her twin had done to rescue her. ‘The overriding feeling was just this immense gratitude,’ she says.
Not that the road to recovery was easy: Melissa’s body still bears the scars from her ordeal, from the spiralling patterns of puncture marks on her leg to a five-inch scar on her abdomen.
SHE has gastric issues to this day from a laparotomy [abdominal surgery] procedure. ‘It’s left that area quite sensitive so when I get stressed it can be quite painful,’ she says. ‘Other than that, I think we’ve both been lucky.’
The psychological recovery has proved more challenging: both have suffered PTSD, and they only now feel able to return to full-time work, starting jobs as cabin crew later this year.
‘We did struggle a lot with disassociation, not really feeling connected to ourselves, to family, to friends,’ says Georgia, whose own bite on the wrist is now fully healed.
‘It’s your brain’s way of coping, you just switch off as a way of managing the trauma. For a long time after we got back, it was putting one foot in front of the other, like survival mode, but now we are trying to look ahead.’
It is one reason that the twins have signed up for a fundraising swim in — of all places — the River Thames, aiming to complete eight miles in its murky waters this August to raise money for a PTSD charity and a Mexican charity that provides medical training to impoverished communities.
Aren’t they terrified? Melissa admits that even getting in a swimming pool for their first training swim was tough.
‘It was pretty triggering, especially doing front crawl, which reminded me of trying to escape the crocodile all over again,’ she says.
‘At the same time I feel like we both need to reclaim the water.’
That sentiment is shared by Georgia, who still seems to be in shock that her own courage will be formally acknowledged by none other than the King later this year.
She received the news on Valentine’s Day in an envelope marked private and confidential. ‘I opened it and I literally said, “No way”,’ she recalls. ‘It’s quite difficult to come to terms with because part of me doesn’t feel like I really deserve it.
‘What I did was just a necessary action to save Melissa’s life, like anyone would.’