Enlarge image
Tied Alligator: The animal was caught and killed after the attack
Photo: HANDOUT/AFP
In the US state of Florida, a three-meter-long alligator killed an 85-year-old woman who was walking her dog.
This is reported, among other things, by the »New York Times«.
The woman was walking her dog along a rainwater retention basin on Monday when the alligator probably jumped out of the water and apparently snapped at the woman's dog.
He then attacked the woman, grabbed her leg and pulled her into the water.
The woman's dog survived unharmed.
The attack happened in Fort Pierce, about 200 kilometers north of Miami.
A neighbor of the dead, Carol Thomas, told local television station CBS12.com that she saw the alligator bit the woman's leg and dragged her into the pond.
She shouted at her to save herself on a paddle boat in the pond.
"She yelled, 'I can't, the alligator got me!'" said Thomas.
Thomas said she grabbed a long staff to hit the alligator on the snout or to push it away from its victim.
But the animal had already pulled the woman under the water.
'I couldn't do anything.
That's haunting me.
I don't know what else I could have done," Thomas told the TV station.
Another resident, Fran Volpini, said he's seen smaller alligators in the development, but none over ten feet tall.
"That was a monster," said Volpini.
According to the newspaper report, after the attack on the woman, a trapper caught the alligator and killed him.
According to the New York Times, 1.3 million alligators live in Florida.
According to the newspaper, serious injuries from alligator attacks are rare in Florida.
However, the 85-year-old is at least the third death within a year: In July 2022, an 80-year-old died after falling into a pond and being attacked by two alligators.
In May 2022, the body of a 47-year-old man was found in a Florida lake, believed to have been fishing for frisbees.
Alligators had torn off his arms.
has