A body has been recovered by police divers searching for a young boy seized by an alligator at Walt Disney World in Florida.
The two-year-old was dragged into the water on Tuesday evening in front of his family as he played on a made-made beach near the Grand Floridian Resort and Spa.
Five alligators were seized and killed since the attack in an attempt to find the boy’s remains.
Some 50 people were using sonar equipment to search a system of lakes and ponds linked by canals to the Seven Seas Lagoon where the boy was attacked while wading in shallow water.
Disney World closed the beaches at all nine of its resorts while search teams scoured the 172-acre Seven Seas Lagoon. Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings said the missing boy’s name was Lane Graves from Nebraska.
The body found in the water has yet to be formally identified but police are confident it is Lane’s. Earlier on Wednesday, police said there was “no question” the boy was dead.
The family from Elkhorn in Nebraska were relaxing near the shore of the lagoon when the incident happened.
Theme park giant Disney operates a rigorous alligator management scheme in liaison with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission in which those that stray close to resort areas are captured and removed, The Times reported.