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A 14-foot alligator was caught and "humanly killed" in Florida dragging a deceased body down a canal, sparking reactions online. The incident happened on the afternoon of September 22 in the city of Largo, four miles away from Clearwater, Florida, where the reptile was roaming around the neighborhood and shocking the residents.
The reptile was spotted by a resident, named JaMarcus Bullard, living in Largo, and the footage captured the animal that clearly appeared to be over 10 feet in length. While speaking to media outlet WFLA-NBC Tampa, Bullard said:
“I threw a rock at the gator just to see if it was really a gator and like it pulled the body, like it was holding on to the lower part of the torso, and pulled it under the water.”
He told the publication that he was on his way to a job interview when he saw the harrowing sight and immediately called the Largo Fire Department based down the street from where the alligator was seen.
The shocking incident raised several eyebrows with some of the netizens reacting hilariously. One of the users commented:
X users react to Florida's man-eating alligator incident
After the video of the 14-foot alligator devouring a human torso in Florida went viral online, X users were shocked. Several users shared memes and GIFs describing their shock at the incident. Others felt bad for the reptile stating he was only doing what wild animals do and should not have been killed but rather transported somewhere else.
While speaking to Bay Spectrum 9 News, another resident of the same neighborhood, Jennifer Dean said:
“A lot of my neighbors were out here and they’re the ones that told me about the gator. While we were standing here we heard a shot, I assume they killed the gator.”
The Pinellas County Sheriff's Office reported that the victim and the reptile were rescued from a nearby canal, but did not comment on the shooting.
Investigators were caught on camera standing next to the bloody alligator. It's not clear if it killed the person or if they died in some other way. The animal was measured and found to be almost 14 feet long.
The popular Ridgecrest Park, where a five-acre lake is known to be home to alligators, is not far from the scene of the event.
Dean said that alligators frequent her area, but this was the biggest she had ever seen. Investigators are still attempting to figure out what killed the victim.
Alligator strikes are pretty rare and almost never end in death, according to statistics. So far this year, there have only been two reports of strikes that killed people in Florida.
