A tourist ran over in Florida with his car an alligator more than two meters long, which was embedded in the underside of the vehicle, but for fear that he was still alive, he continued driving as much as he could before warning of a “malfunction”. “, as reported this Sunday by a Miami newspaper.
The events took place on April 17 on a highway that crosses South Florida from coast to coast and passes through the Everglades, a huge wetland populated by alligators and pythons, among other fauna, but they have now been revealed by the driver of the crane company that served the tourist, according to the newspaper El Nuevo Herald.
Joshua Schroeder was not told what the problem was with the vehicle that he had to tow in the middle of the night and he only found out when he arrived at the scene and found the car and a terrified tourist, who has only been told that he lives in New York .
“I got to the scene and when I looked out the back window of the truck I realized I couldn’t see one of the car’s wheels,” the tow truck driver for the United States Transport Towing & Recovery company told the Miami newspaper.
When he got out of the truck, he saw a seven-foot (2.1-meter) alligator caught in the wheel. “It was so embedded that I had to tow the vehicle with the alligator still trapped under it,” she said.
It is assumed that by then the reptile was no longer alive.
“The man was scared, but who wouldn’t be in a situation like that? If you run over an alligator, the first thing you think is that you’re alive and mad at you,” Schroeder said.
“My first reaction,” he added, “was to think he might still be alive and I took my precautions. When it’s this dark, the last thing you want to do is look under your car for an alligator.”
Schroeder took the alligator-enclosed vehicle to a car dealership in Naples (west coast of Florida), but it was not accepted because the animal’s body was still there.
They also did not accept the vehicle in a body shop and in the end in the towing company they had to tear the alligator to pieces to remove the front and one of the wheels.