An 85-year-old Florida woman died Monday while trying to save her dog from a 10-foot-long, 700-pound alligator.
Around noon, Gloria Serge walked her dog along the retention pond in the Spanish Lakes Fairways retirement community in Ft. Pierce. An approximately 10-foot-long alligator suddenly lunged out of the water and attacked it. Serge attempted to save her dog but was dragged underwater to her death.
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Serge’s neighbor described watching in horror as she was killed by an alligator while walking her dog.
The neighbor, identified only as Carol, said she saw Serge being dragged into the water by the 10-foot gator during the attack on Monday.
“(I) just remember her coming up and you know… getting air, and I’m saying swim toward the, swim toward the paddle boat, and she says, ‘I can’t, the gator has me,'” the woman told local TV station WPBF.
Carol then called 911 and grabbed a pole in hopes of helping her friend, the station reported.
“I thought, well, I’ll put that out in the water and hook her or hit him, and — she was not there anymore.”
Helpless, Carol could only wait. “I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t get in the water.”
Serge died due to the attack, and her body was recovered. The dog survived the attack, according to FWC.
“The victim has been recovered, and a contracted nuisance alligator trapper has captured the alligator involved in the incident,” the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said in a statement.
“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.”
Several roads in the area were closed while police and FWC investigated the attack. The St. Lucie County Sheriff’s office provided the FWC aerial support while the wildlife commission searched for the gator, WPEC reported.
Woman, 85, dragged into water, killed by 10-foot gator while walking dog in Port St. Lucie FL https://t.co/ZmZBfTQlbK pic.twitter.com/BeV4phK0BN
— Susie Blackmon (@SusieBlackmon) February 21, 2023
Alligator attack: 85-year-old woman killed by gator while with her dog in St. Lucie, Florida https://t.co/vsHt5PdJUO pic.twitter.com/gOvi10NUxx
— Eyewitness News (@ABC7NY) February 21, 2023
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Photos taken by the St. Lucie Sheriff’s Office show six people loading the gator 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 had reportedly closed several roads in the area to launch a probe into the woman’s death.
While gators are reportedly not uncommon in the area, neighbors claimed they had never witnessed an attack like that before.
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.
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The FWC said alligators usually don’t attack people and that fatalities from gator attacks are rare. The commission noted that Florida had averaged just eight unprovoked alligator bites requiring medical attention per year in the last ten years.
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