florida alligator
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From the Associated Press

Deputies in South Carolina shot and killed an alligator that fatally attacked a woman on Friday, authorities said.

The officers were called to a pond on Kiawah Island around 5 p.m. and saw the animal attack, the Charleston County Sheriff’s Office said.

The woman was dead. Her name has not been released. Deputies retrieved the alligator’s carcass to help with the investigation, deputies said on Twitter.

Authorities did not say if they knew what the woman or the alligator were doing before the attack.

This is the third fatal alligator attack in South Carolina in the past four years. A 90-year-old woman walked out of a Charleston nursing home in 2016 and was killed, while a 45-year-old woman walking her dog was fatally attacked on Hilton Head Island in August 2018.

Before those attacks, South Carolina had never recorded a person killed by an alligator.

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86 COMMENTS

    • Almost always these attacks are related to alligator feeding. Not necessarily the victim feeding them, but others conditioning the gator to associate human presence with food. They get pissed off when you don’t give them their loaf of bread.

  2. Need to be aware of your surroundings at all times. Not only for the gaters, but for criminals.

    • Cowgirl,

      Exactly so. I’ve bee instructing my daughter how to assess potential threats in parking lots and how to minimize risk. She will not carry a firearm, but I am always glad to see her canister of mace and her alarm hanging from her purse strap.

  3. I know some people that live in Hilton Head. They apparently aren’t allowed to shoot gators in their own yard. Couldn’t you just claim self-defense? I’d shoot one every time. Maybe it would be different if I grew up around them, but they seem pretty terrifying to me. Some people feel this way about black bears, which I did grow up around, but they aren’t the same.

    • If I lived in. Hilton Head, I would post signs at gator eye-level: “Gators not allowed. Violators will be reported to the authorities.”

      That should do it.

    • A prohibition against shooting something in your yard is probably common in most areas of the country. In SoCal, if a wayward (but snarling and potentially dangerous) dog, racoon, or coyote comes onto your property, you’re not allowed to shoot it unless you have genuine reason to believe it will harm you, have no ability to retreat, and already have your gun on your person (you can’t go inside to get it, then come back out). Otherwise, you’re supposed to call retreat indoors and call the Animal Control Dept. Might be the same reasoning for gators in SC.

    • If you use common sense you’ll be fine. If you see water in Florida, Louisiana, etc, chances are there could be gators (and cottonmouth snakes). You could even hit the jackpot and meet some bull sharks, they can survive in freshwater.

  4. “Authorities did not say if they knew what the woman or the alligator were doing before the attack.”

    I find that statement very amusing in light of the dark circumstances of the incident.

    Well, I got a couple ideas.

    1. The alligator was probably looking for something to eat.
    2. Getting too damn close to one another.

    Further into the article I have to say I’d like to have a better understanding of the Nursing Home attack. How was that even able to happen?? No one saw an alligator big enough to kill a person on the premises?

    Rough stuff.

  5. This is an Associated Press story. Nothing AP writes, including the words ” and” and “the”, can be trusted.

    That being said, it is a tragedy for that woman and her family (checked local sources).

    Once a gator attacks a person it is necessary to put it down.

      • Huntmaster,

        “Isn’t that kind of closing the gate after the horse is gone?”

        Assuming you mean killing the gator after it has harmed a human. The risk is that once a gator has learned to hunt humans, it will continue to so do.

    • This. Pretty shameful when you can state you’d believe William Randolph Hurst or Pulitzer before these people. The very people the term Yellow Journalism was created to describe.

      • What is it about this story that is false?

        Or do you just assume based on what Hannity has told you to think?

        • Pretty presumptive on your part. I don’t follow anyone’s group think, if you’ve read any of my posts, that fact would be abundantly clear. My comment was toward the lack of integrity of the AP as a whole. Good job though, leaping to negative conclusions that have no basis in fact.

          I have no idea who Hannity even is, nor do I care.

        • Ah, I just looked him up. Nope, sorry. I don’t watch the brain eating box, a.k.a. tv.

          If I’m watching anything, it’s more than likely a physics program/lecture, other science/mathematics program/lectures, historical documentaries, or something about weapons & the history thereof. On the web, nearly exclusively, and that is the order of importance and frequency listed. Current events, I read and draw my own conclusions. Joe Friday style, “Just the facts ma’am, just the facts”.

          If you haven’t read any of the AP hit pieces, especially prolific about “gun violence” these days, you’re missing out on some choice propaganda, disinformation, and misinformation on a vast scale. So no, I don’t trust them a bit, and neither should anyone.

    • Thats the real reason the government agents shot him. He was really a good boy, planned on going to college and playing football. He had a full scholarship to the University of Florida.

      • So unfair. One mistake and it is all gone.

        Adding the /sarc just to avoid misunderstanding.

  7. I’m sure that inner city concrete jungle folk generally laugh off any mention of wild animals being a threat to people requiring guns as something that only happens in the movies.

    • Yup. Kind of amusing from a country boy point of view.
      Even the smaller black tail deer I feed in the back yard are still wild animals.

      I want to go on a gator hunt really bad. It on my top 5 list.

      • It’s a lot of fun, my favorite hunting in fact. There’s just something thrilling about hunting something that can also hunt you. Different states have different laws obviously but Florida requires you do it at night, which makes it all the more intense.

        • Right? Gator’s tasty eats, but I’ve not been in years. Only issue I have, is living square in the middle of a pond, a small lake, and another fairly large lake. Some of the air boat’s are a bit on the loud side, with strait piped exhausts. Disturbs people trying to sleep when they go full throttle on a Wednesday morning at 3 a.m.

          Doesn’t bother me personally, but then again, I learned to sleep through planes thumping down on deck of a carrier about 16′ over my head.

  8. Conservation efforts on behalf of gators has been successful. Too damn successful.

    What caliber for gators? (as if we didn’t have enough caliber wars bs)

    • “What caliber for gators? (as if we didn’t have enough caliber wars bs)”

      I once used a .41Magnum. It was still thrashing after 5 rounds to the head. You need a bigger gun!

      • Yesterday I enjoyed watching a .50 Beowulf AR review from Demolition Ranch on YouTube. Like .458 Socom, but more gator-deadly.

      • “I once used a .41Magnum. It was still thrashing after 5 rounds to the head. You need a bigger gun!”

        I hate to break it to you – You likely didn’t hit the gator’s walnut-sized brain. That works for mammals, reptiles are built differently.

        “Between the eyes” doesn’t work – The brain is located about 8 inches behind the eyes…

      • You have to hit in the brain to kill it. Your shots were off the mark. The reason Troy Landry and anyone that hunts gators can kill them with a .22 is they know where to place the shot to the head.

        I have actually caught and taped up the mouth of several wild gators in the 4.5 to 6 foot range as a young adult in my 20’s (70’s). Once I was able to get them under control I would transport them to another location so I can kill them since where I am from it is illegal to take gators without a nuisance permit (anytime) or a tags during gator season.

        Never had to fire a gun to kill one just hit them in the right spot with a ball pen hammer and commence to skinning them. Make a few cuts to the hide and stick a needle for inflating basketballs between the hide and the meat and the hide will separate very easily. Finish trimming out and have some fried gator or alligator sauce piquant.

    • jwm, I’ve killed them with .22LR, a few assorted center fire rifles and the last one with a Glock 23.

      • Outside of zoos I’ve never even seen a live gator. Last time I was in gator country was in the 70s. They were very endangered then and seeing one was pretty rare.

        • Quick gator story. About 15 years ago I lived in a townhouse that was across the street from a retention pond that connected to a local reservoir. When I say street, it was maybe 12 ft wide. I got home late one night and walked across the street to relieve myself in the pond. Leaned up against a tree and did my thing. When I turned to go back I stepped on a stick. SPLASH! Right next to me. It took me one step to get back across the road…. I grabbed the flashlight out of my car and shined the eyes and tail of the gator slowly swimming away. Sucker was a good 6 ft from eye to the part of the tail I could see, so maybe 8 ft long.

          I grew up in the coastal region of SC. They were rare here when I was young. They are not rare at all now. That reservoir I mentioned, there was a newspaper article within a couple years of my story of people with houses on the water reporting that they would see small gators swimming get eaten by bigger gators.

    • Gator can really use any caliber. You absolutely must hit the brain or it won’t really bother it. You can use a .22, I know people that do. But I prefer something bigger incase to allow more room for error. I like to use a .38 bang stick because I’m not going to cry if that gets dropped in the water. After you shoot it you want to take a knife and stab the brain too, make sure you get the brain. And tape the mouth shut anyway. A bullet zipping past the brain will just stun it and it’ll wake up pissed in your boat or truck later.

      • “A bullet zipping past the brain will just stun it and it’ll wake up pissed in your boat or truck later.”

        Yikes! That’s good old-fashioned nightmare fuel right there! 😮

      • Mad props (is that a thing anymore?…dunno) to any jaguar that can take a gator as long as itself AND strut into the water with it in its mouth and still alive.

        • The ‘neck bite’ the big cats use has a purpose, it’s to crush the spine.

          With the spinal column crushed, the prey is nice and limp so the cat can eat at its leisure.

          It’s a helluva way to go, the prey can be conscious and aware it’s being eaten alive, not able to move, and probably feeling little pain…

  10. Hilarious! Just saw an ad for a remote controlled boat that looks like a gator head.
    The commercial was way too funny.

    Too soon?

  11. Sounds to me like those coastal islands need an armed patrol hunting down and killing every alligator they can find. Obviously they’ve become over populated and see humans as a food source.

    It should always be legal to shoot a predator on your property, alligators and bears (black or brown) are a good place to start. Don’t forget coyotes and mountain lion. Their place is in the wilds, not in ponds of golf courses or edging onto the grounds of a nursing home.

    Shoot the damned things!

    PS: Never seen an alligator outside of a zoo but I have seen with my own eyes what a black bear could do to a teenage girl. Once you see something like that it leaves you with no tolerance for animals that attack people. Kill the animal at the first sign it is getting acclimated around humans, for the next step is a tragedy.

    • Gator usually don’t attack people unlike crocodiles. Gators will attack if you mess with it, you go near it nest or on rare occasions if it is hungry.

      The gator must of heard humans taste like chicken.

      Without knowing more to the story, I would bet the gator was a female and she was near her nest or the woman was feeding the gator when it became aggressive.

    • “Sounds to me like those coastal islands need an armed patrol hunting down and killing every alligator they can find.”

      All that would be is a huge waste of money. Never send the government to do a red necks job. It’s kinda like the Great Australian Emu War, the Australian army deployed soldiers equipped with trucks and machine guns to hunt down the vast emu population and in turn accomplished nothing, allowing the Emu’s to declare victory. This is because when a ton of humans show up with things like vehicles and loud guns, animals tend to scatter and hide.

      What works far better, is to relax hunting/trapping laws, and put out a bounty. That way the people who actually know how to hunt, know what to look for, have more incentive and less red tape to do something they already do anyway.

  13. True story:

    Took a swamp walk in Louisianna with my wife and 18 month old daughter. It was a boardwalk with railings on either side. The sign at the entrance indicated a 1.4 mile stroll. About half-way through the walk there was a sign warning about alligators. The boardwalk was only about 6″ above the water.

    I suggested to my wife that we pick up the pace.

    Always wondered whether that sign and its placement was an amusement for the Park Service: “Hey, let’s give them tourists a story to tell when they get home.”

  14. Everybody says it was a shame. I heard she has a granddaughter who likes to pick native greens for dinner.

  15. That’s it! I’ve had enough of these senseless and preventable deaths! BAN ASSAULT GATORS!!! They all have high capacity stomachs. You don’t need a gator to hunt deer. Why should citizens have access to gators or vice versa? This has to stop! It’s just common sense that alligators be banned in this country. Think of the children! And let’s not forget that Canada banned gators and hasn’t had a single alligator related death since! That proves it works!

  16. Reminds me of a picture I saw years ago of a cop, crouched on the hood of his car, sidearm drawn, pumping rounds into a snarling gator that was at ground level. I’ve only ever lived in the West (currently in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado) but gators are a whole other thing in my book. We have plenty of bears (And a handful of moose) around here and I’ve had my own run ins with them, but I fear gators way more. I’m gonna go with Sterling Archer on this one…. crocodiles and alligators are literally prehistoric reptiles that simply stopped evolving millennia because they are already the perfect killing machines for their areas

  17. Gators run fast in a straight line short distances and are good at jumping out of the water. Too close is never good with big animals that have a walnut sized brain!

    I wonder if they’re selling the meat or hide… could use a new belt!

    • “Too close is never good with big animals that have a walnut sized brain!”

      So, don’t get too close to Andrew Cuomo?

      • Cumo got an asshole transplant, and it rejected him…

        *Rimshot*

  18. Maybe she was already dead…murdered?…before the ‘gator got his taste???

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