Police in the Australian state of Queensland are investigating the death of a 19-year-old woman whose body was found surrounded by stray dogs on the coast of Kgari, formerly known as Fraser Island.
This UNESCO World Heritage Site is located off the east coast of Australia and is visited by hundreds of thousands of tourists each year.
Queensland Police said in a press conference that the woman was Canadian and had been working at a backpacker hostel on the island for the past six weeks. They said she traveled there with a friend from her home country.
According to police, around 5 a.m. local time Monday (2 p.m. Sunday Eastern Time), the woman told people she was going swimming early in the morning.
Just over an hour later, two men driving by found her body surrounded by a flock of about 10 dingoes on the beach near the Maheno shipwreck.
Police said it was too early to know whether the woman’s death was caused by a wild dog, which is protected as a native species in Queensland’s national park.
“We can confirm that the woman’s body was touched and disturbed by a dingo, but we have not yet speculated as to whether this had anything to do with her cause of death,” Queensland Police Inspector Paul Algie said.
Ms Algie added that while dingoes were culturally important to the island’s local and indigenous peoples, “they are wild animals and need to be treated as such.”
“We ask everyone visiting Kgari, a beautiful place, to stay away from the dingoes, not to feed them, and to let them go about their lives and move around them accordingly.”
Ms Algie said the incident had shaken the island’s close-knit local community. “Kigali police are locals in Kigali. They have been talking to locals throughout the day and as you can imagine, everyone is completely horrified and shocked by what has happened.”
The woman’s body will be returned to the mainland and an autopsy will be performed on Wednesday.
Queensland Police said they have notified the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) to contact the victim’s family. CNN has reached out to the RCMP for comment.
