An 85-year-old Florida woman died Monday while trying to save her dog from a 10-foot-long alligator.
The freak attack reportedly occurred outside Spanish Lakes Fairways, a retirement community in Fort Pierce, WPTV reported.
According to residents, the unidentified octogenarian had been walking her pet when an alligator suddenly lunged out of the water and grabbed it. The senior attempted to save her pooch, but was dragged underwater, CBS reported.
While the pup survived, the woman was not so lucky.
The victim’s body was subsequently “recovered” when an alligator wrangler was called in to trap the rogue reptile.
“It was definitely a fight,” nuisance alligator trapper Robert Lilly said, recalling the capture. “[We] snagged him on the bottom. He never surfaced. He stayed down the whole time.”
He added, “We were able to get a second hook in him and a hard line in him so we could get him up.”
Accompanying photos and footage show six people corralling the critter, before loading it into the back of a pickup truck. Experts estimated that the beast measured around 10 to 11-feet long and weighed between 600 and 700 pounds.
The St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office has reportedly closed several roads in the area, so they can launch a probe into the woman’s death.
While gators are reportedly not an uncommon sight in the area, neighbors claimed they had never witnessed an attack like that before.
In another gator-related incident, authorities hauled a 4-foot-long alligator from Brooklyn’s Prospect Park Lake early Sunday near an area popular with kiddies.
Meghan Lalor, a rep for the Parks Department, said the reptile was likely an unwanted pet whose owner decided to release it in public waters.
It needs to be killed not moved. Its tasted HUMAN now, isnt that enough? God love this precious woman whose heart loved her friend until the end