Woman, 84, suffers ‘significant injuries’ from gator attack in South Florida

Published Sep 09, 2024  •  1 minute read

An 84-year-old woman was attacked by a gator in South Florida. Photo by SCREEN GRAB /NBC NEWS

An elderly woman suffered “significant injuries” after being bit by an alligator while walking her dog in South Florida, authorities said.

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The scary incident happened in North Fort Myers last week when the gator, measuring7-foot-3, bit the woman on her right leg, a statement from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said, per NBC News.

The 84-year-old also suffered injuries to her arms and one wrist and was hospitalized, commission spokesperson Bradley Johnson said.

Her condition was unknown as of last Friday, Johnson said, but he called her injuries “significant.”

The woman’s dog was not injured.

A nuisance alligator trapper found the animal after the incident and it was “humanely euthanized” because fish and wildlife considers public safety the first priority, Johnson said.

The commission suggests that people in the Sunshine State keep a safe distance from alligators and keep pets on a leash and away from edges of water, noting that pets are often alligators’ “natural prey.”

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In addition to issuing a warning to never feed alligators, the commission also recommends swimming only in designated areas during daylight hours because the reptiles are most active between dusk and dawn.

According to the latest figures ending in December 2022, there haven’t been more than one dozen alligator bites per year since 2017, with 12 being the maximum recorded (in 2017 and 2020.)

In 2023, a 10-foot alligator bit off a Florida man’s right arm after he fell into a pond in Port Charlotte.

A year before that, a man survived an alligator attack on the Gulf Coast of Florida after he mistook the 7-foot-long reptile for a dog.

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