2023-09-23 03:02:05
A huge alligator was captured this Friday, September 22, carrying the lifeless body of a Florida resident through a canal. A witness first saw the 14-foot reptile with its victim clenched in its jaws on a residential street in Largo, a small community just four miles south of Clearwater.
“I realized there was a body in his mouth, so I started recording,” witness JaMarcus Bullard told Spectrum Bay News 9. Bullard, who was on his way to a job interview, alerted the Largo Fire Department, which was parked a few steps from the bloody scene.
“While we were here, we heard a gunshot, I guess they killed the alligator,” said emergency personnel, who quickly pulled the alligator out of the water and shot it “several times,” Bullard said.
The agents said that around 1:50 pm, they responded to the area of 134th Avenue North and 121st Street North where an emergency call was received reporting the incident. In a statement, investigators announced that the remains of the body were recovered from the canal by the sheriff’s office dive team.
The Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office confirmed that both the victim and the alligator were pulled from the canal, but declined to say whether they were the ones who pulled the trigger. At the scene, investigators stood next to the bloodied alligator, which appeared to be at least 10 feet long, which is almost 4 meters in length.
Aerial video from Sky 10 showed law enforcement standing around the alligator. 10 Tampa Bay partially pixelated the image, as it shows a large amount of blood on the ground. Investigators are still trying to determine the cause of the Floridian’s death.
A local took to Twitter, now Unfortunately, we saw a human body taken from the canal by divers from a helicopter.”
14-foot alligator caught carrying a lifeless human body through a Florida canal | Photo: Twitter/@rawsalerts
A similar policy is implemented in Florida under the FCC’s State Nuisance Alligator Program (SNAP).
Alligators over four feet in length hanging around residential or developed areas are generally considered a nuisance and are removed by SNAP through the use of highly trained trappers. The alligators are then relocated to remote areas when possible.
In other cases, the animals are sacrificed. But with 1.3 million alligators living in the state, the FWC said removing one “does not have a significant impact on our state’s alligator population.”
Living with Alligators: What Florida Residents Should Know
While Florida is known as the Sunshine State, it is also home to many alligators. An estimated 1.25 million alligators live in the state among the 5 million in the southeastern United States, according to Defenders of Wildlife.
When their prey is too small to swallow whole, they hide it underwater | Photo: AFP Agency
Basic tips to follow while living among alligators and crocodiles in Florida include: never feed an alligator, keep your distance if you see one, swim only in designated areas during daylight hours, and keep leashed pets out of the water.
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