FLORIDA – A man who was fishing on the shore of a Florida lake was bitten and killed by an alligator on Oct 16, according to US police and wildlife authorities.
Steven Hamilton, 71, was fishing at Dr Bradford Memorial Park on the south side of Lake Apopka, in Winter Garden, a spokesperson for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said in an e-mailed statement.
The alligator, which was nearly 3.6m long, was “dispatched”, Captain Michael Mason of the Winter Garden Police Department said during a news conference on Oct 16. When asked by a reporter if the alligator had been euthanised, Mason said only that it was “removed as a danger to the public”.
Police first responded to the lake area – a known alligator habitat in central Florida – at about 5pm on Oct 16, he said.
“Lake Apopka has tons of alligators in it,” Mason said, “so that’s not uncommon to see alligators in this part of town at all.”
The Fish and Wildlife commission, which is investigating alongside Winter Garden police, said emergency personnel declared Hamilton dead at the scene. An alligator trapper was then sent to find the reptile.
It was not immediately clear what injuries Hamilton sustained from the alligator.
Lake Apopka, which is 24km to 32km north-west of Orlando, is Florida’s fourth-largest lake at roughly 12,130ha, according to the St Johns River Water Management District. In 2024, it had the 14th-largest alligator population among lakes in the state, with more than 4,600, The Palm Beach Post reported.
There are alligators in all 67 Florida counties, according to the Fish and Wildlife commission. The agency estimates that the state has a healthy and stable alligator population surpassing one million.
Though there is a robust number of the reptiles throughout Florida, attacks on people are rare. They are more common in or around water, as alligators are not well adapted to capturing prey on land. They can, however, lunge at prey within a few feet of a shoreline.
“Local wildlife, respect it, keep your distance,” Mason said on Oct 16. An alligator “looks like it’s docile. It looks like your Florida emblem. But it can be dangerous”. NYTIMES
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.