A 10-foot-long alligator killed an elderly woman in Florida as she tried to rescue her dog from the clutches of the reptile.
The 85-year-old woman died while walking her dog at the Spanish Lakes Fairways community in Fort Pierce, Florida, at 12.07pm on Monday, said officials from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) who responded to a report about an alligator bite at a retirement community.
The gator had grabbed the woman’s dog initially, but went on to target her after she tried to save her pet, according to eyewitnesses cited by CBS Miami.
The pet dog sustained some injuries. Its current condition is not known.
The woman’s body was later recovered. Her name has not been disclosed.
According to WCVB5, the gator had lunged out of the water to attack them.
Trappers found the alligator lurking at the bottom of the lake and pulled it out. It was taken away in a truck.
“Snagged him [the alligator] on the bottom. He never surfaced. He stayed down the whole time. Got a second hook in him and then a hard line in him so we could get him up,” Robert Lilly, an alligator trapper working for the FWC, told WPBF.
Mr Lilly said it was “definitely a fight” as the reptile weighed between 600 and 700 pounds.
Alligators rarely cause serious injuries in Florida, according to the FWC.
“The FWC places the highest priority on public safety and administers a Statewide Nuisance Alligator Program (SNAP) to address complaints concerning specific alligators believed to pose a threat to people, pets or property,” it said in its statement over the incident.
The FWC and St Lucie County Sheriff’s Office have launched a joint investigation into the incident that led to the elderly woman’s death.
“Our thoughts and deepest sympathies are with the family and friends of the victim,” it said.
Florida is home to 1.3 million gators across its 67 counties.
According to FWC data from November 2021, 442 unprovoked bite incidents have occurred in Florida between 1948 and 2021, with 26 of these bites resulting in human fatalities.
FWC’s Human-Alligator Incidents Fact Sheet stated that “as more people are drawn to the water, more alligator‐human interactions can occur, creating a greater potential for conflict. But, alligators seldom bite people and fatalities from such occurrences are rare”.
“Over the last 10 years, Florida has averaged eight unprovoked bites per year that are serious enough to require professional medical treatment. The frequency of these serious bites is variable but there has not been a significant trend in the past 10 years,” the FWC said.
“The likelihood of a Florida resident being seriously injured during an unprovoked alligator incident in Florida is roughly only one in 3.1 million.”
