American Alligator (alligator Mississippiensis) Having A Rest In
Bigstock

[ED: On Sunday we ran a story about a woman who was killed on Kiawah Island, South Carolina by an alligator. Deputies subsequently shot the big reptile in order to retrieve her body. Now it seems that the dead woman had presented herself as an easy meal for the gator.]

By Jeffrey Collins, AP

The woman attacked and killed by an alligator in a gated community along the South Carolina coast was visiting the homeowner to do her nails and was trying to touch the animal when it grabbed her, authorities said.

After briefly getting away from the alligator Friday, the woman stood in waist deep water in the Kiawah Island pond and said “I guess I wont do this again,” but the alligator grabbed her in its jaws again and took her under, according to a supplemental police report released Tuesday.

Cynthia Covert, 58, died of drowning before Charleston County deputies and firefighters were able to shoot and kill the alligator and use poles to get her out of the pond, authorities said.

Covert came to Kiawah Island, a gated community southeast of Charleston, to give the homeowner a manicure Friday, according to the police report.

The woman told deputies Covert typically was professional in her salon, but was relaxed and excited at the home, talking about her boyfriend’s visit from Tennessee, and brought a glass of wine with her.

Covert saw the alligator while working on the woman’s porch and when Covert finished she started taking pictures of the alligator, the woman told deputies.

The woman and her husband started screaming for Covert to get away from the alligator because they saw it grab a deer a few days earlier, deputies said.

Covert said “I don’t look like a deer” and reached to touch the alligator when the animal attacked, according to the report.

The husband and a neighbor grabbed a rope and threw it to Covert when she surfaced and stood in the pond. Covert grabbed the rope and said “I guess I wont do this again,” but was suddenly pulled under by the alligator, the police report said.

Deputies and firefighters looked for Colvert for 10 minutes before her body surfaced. The alligator took her back under once. When the alligator surfaced again, a deputy shot the animal in the head with his 9 mm handgun, the police report said.

Covert’s leg was severely damaged, but an autopsy determined she drowned, the Charleston County Coroner’s Office said.

Covert was the third person killed by an alligator 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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115 COMMENTS

    • Damn, now I kind of feel sorry for the gator. Punished for this lady being blindingly stupid!

      • “Covert said ‘I don’t look like a deer’ and reached to touch the alligator…”

        Serge beat me to it, but…Darwin Award. Though it’ll probably be added to the COVID-19 death toll.

        • “probably be added to the COVID-19 death toll”

          Reports state that she had trouble breathing, so yes. No test needed.

        • This fake C19 stuff started with the story of the Italian skydiver. A quick check would have debunked this nonsense because when it allegedly happened recreational activities like skydiving had already been banned. It’s all I heard it from friend who heard from friend who probably picked it up from a Chinese troll account. The same people who believe that hundreds of thousand of Chinese died think the rest of the world is upping the cases.

          Why, it must be a vast globalist conspiracy that even includes anti-globalist leaders like Trump and Johnson. You all think BOJO was sick? It was a ruse to fool the sheeple. He was actually on a beach in Majorca. (I think I need the big /SARC here.)

        • Same can be said for influenza. If you want to count only those cases that are unambiguously flu then there are only a couple of hundred flu deaths a year. Almost all deaths counted as flu are really pneumonia cases where the physician presumed that the pneumonia was a result of the flu. We only test 1-2% of patients with flu like symptoms. The final totals are a result of models not actual testing. Since we now know that C19 causes blood clots that lead to cardiovascular events it is reasonable to assume that any person who dies from such an event and is positive for C19 that C19 is the cause of death. The Germans have taken the opposite view. Unless you die of viral pneumonia then they count that death as something else.

        • The thing with influenza is that the viruses are common and studied enough that we have a darn good idea of fatality rates for various populations. There’s no reason to suspect that CDC estimates are far off. But, they are just that, estimates because no one is going to pay for 50-150 million or more flu tests a year.

          The clotting issue is yet another example where the question is “Where does the data take us?”. Right now a lot of that is unknown. We know this occurs in a subset of hospitalized patients which is a subset of the diagnosed which is a subset of actual infected/previously infected.

          What we do know is that it’s a small population. Why things work like they do for that population is unknown. But clotting disorders were known well in advance of CoV-2 existing in a human population.

          So, doea CoV-2 cause this? Or are we catching people with mild disorders exacerbated by CoV-2? Significant disorders exacerbated by the virus? A combination of factors? Preexisting damage to some system(s)? Is it a disorder that is independent of CoV-2 and is being caught at the time because of the virus? A vitamin K deficiency (Vitamin K plays a part in clotting)? The list goes on and none of these questions have answers because we haven’t eliminated the options due to a small sample size. We’re just aware of something that we’re catching in CoV-2 patients at this point.

          It’s tempting to draw conclusions from small datasets and unfinished work but it’s irresponsible to do that, act like something is known, and then put it out for a public that doesn’t have the first clue what’s going on. It’s like one of the papers here that caused a scare with “excess death” talk that they made the not-so-subtle suggestion was a significant undercount of CoV-2 cases even though the paper has zero data to back that up.

          People don’t like to admit that we just don’t know some of these things. That’s new and scary to most people and it makes it all that much more tempting to draw unsupported conclusions. I mean, fuck, my state drew the conclusion that my Aunt doesn’t need her cancer treatments because, apparently, CoV-2 is more dangerous than untreated intestinal cancer. Because, ya know, a Zoom meeting with a oncologist is the same as actually getting your meds and your imaging.

        • In general we know very few people die directly from the flu. In a normal year it is literally in the hundreds. Flu weakens the immune system which allows the ever present pneumococci to take hold. People also develop pneumonia and die from common rino and corona viruses. How do you know if an untested person died of a cold virus instead of the flu without a test. My aunt died from a summer cold. Flu is not a reportable cause of death for that reason. The number flu cases and deaths in a season are estimates based on the same models the CDC uses to estimate C19 cases and mortality. I also think you are confusing clots in people under 40 with clotting in general.

          We would be better off ignoring the flu and vaccinating the entire population against pneumococcal pneumonia. We would probably have fewer deaths and would not have to play vaccine roulette. We don’t do that because there is more money in 175 million doses of flu vaccine every year than a two or three in a lifetime pneumonia vaccination.

    • Yes sir. You simply cannot fix stupid.

      That was so dumb/foolish that I am surprised that the lady lived to be 58 years old.

        • “unfortunately”

          Idk, was hankering for some gator tail after the story originally surfaced…

        • Educational. I was not aware alligators were a danger to humans. Crocs, yes, but not ‘gators. In retrospect, I guess that was stupid.

        • Yes, alligators. Here in TTAG about 2 years back or so, a two-year-old was snatched by a gator at Disney World in front of the stupid parents that ignored the ‘Danger! Alligator!’ sign…

        • It was a no swimming sign Geoff, and the 2 year old wasn’t swimming, he was playing in knee high water…for a 2 year old. But thanks for sharing your lack of knowledge, again.

        • He was in water, where sign said not to be in the water ‘benG’. And got killed for it.

          Now sit the fuck down, and shut the fuck up… 🙂

        • Hey Geoff “the lights are on but nobody is home” PR, it was a NO SWIMMING sign. He is right, you’re wrong, just take it and stfu now.

      • When I was a kid parents gave me a tour of the area they used to live in the panhandle.

        We watched a lady ignore signs not to go near the water, lose her yappy dog to a gator and then try to get the dog back. Gator missed her arm by inches.

        Educational viewing experience for a 12 year old.

        Typical of my dad he harumphed, looked at me and said “The lesson, son, is that just because someone managed to survive to adulthood doesn’t mean they actually did anything to survive that long.”

        • This is top on my list of things my children NEED to know when dealing with other “adults” as they go out in life. Thank you.

      • That’s just it. Even something small like a squirrel is not to be messed with. Sure it can’t kill you, but anyone who has ever had to have the rabies vaccine will tell you it isn’t fun. What’s so hard about this? Don’t. Mess. With. Wild. Animals.

        • In certain parts of the country you don’t want to get bit by the flea that is on the squirrel. It can kill you.

      • Not necessarily, she died this year so the demotaters will say her vote still counts. Can we get a few gator hide holsters and belts out of this?

        • The only votes that should count are on polling day or postal and pre-poll ballots cast in the actual election period.

    • A 58 she is WAY past Darwin Award. Dried up and stupid gets some idiotic Hollyweird award.

    • 06 May 2020 – Charles Darwin called it “natural selection.” Cynthia Covert died.

    • 2020 semifinalist. We’ve got over half the year left. Let’s not be too hasty!

    • Except at 58…from a Darwinian standpoint, she was smart enough to survive through the fullness of her reproductive years, hence an evolutionary success. The low bar explains why we have so many idiots in the world.

      So, no Darwin Award for her.

      • Yeah, I have to agree, post-menopausal is a hard disqualification for a ‘Darwin Award’…

    • All the “safety sues” have allowed people to dilute the gene pool with low intelligence. Years of warning labels, regulations, unnecessary safety equipment, etc has taken the fun out of life, and worse, encouraged those whom nature would have resolved long ago. Whether nature intended or not, some do need to stick a key in a plug outlet earlier than 58 to prevent the world from getting worse. I feel this is the real damage done by progressive “just one life” policies. Our kids are less safe now because instead of teaching them personal responsibility, and to value their life enough to be careful not to dispose of it so callously as this example, they feel they have a safety buffer and none of what any older adult realizes matters;…dont touch the live wires idiot…to paraphrase.

  3. Populations of alligators in South Carolina have done so well, that the DNR instituted a hunting season in 2008. It’s a numbers game. More gators plus more developments mean more attacks.

    Maybe they should a public service campaign for the people that have zero common sense.

  4. What do all three cases have in common (besides getting killed by a dinosaur?)

    Women.

    • That cute , cuddly gator suckered her in! (insert cute , cuddly photo of gator – I couldn’t find one)

  6. Personally I blame Disney and their complete anthropomorphic mischaracterization of the natural kingdom. Of course it is always on the individual to differentiate between reality and make believe. Sounds like she was almost there but too little too late.

    • Teddy Roosevelt idenfied the problem of Disneification long before anybody heard about Walt. He was concerned that urbanization would detach people from the natural world and lead to a false romanticized view of nature.

    • Well, it is something…maybe it is in the water. I saw a video of some Chinese tourists visiting a tiger park (I don’t recall if it was in china or somewhere else in Asia). there were multiple signs warning people to stay in their cars with their windows rolled up. Well, this woman thinks the tigers are soooo cute she hops out of the car and approaches a couple of lazy looking tigers to get a better picture. Yes, they attacked. She was very very lucky to make it back into the car alive.

      A similar story occurred in Africa at a lion park. Huge signs telling visitors to keep their windows rolled up. Another (idiot) woman went right past these huge signs with her window rolled down. And yes, a lion attacked, dragged her out though the window, and killed her.

      • “I saw a video of some Chinese tourists visiting a tiger park…”

        If it’s any consolation to us Americans, Chinese tourists are despised world-wide worse than the stereotypical ‘Ugly American’ :

        “Have the Chinese Replaced Americans As the Worst Tourists in the World?”

        “They’re obnoxious vandals who can’t drive and shit in public, apparently.”

        “Outside the Louvre in Paris, there’s a sign in Mandarin which tells visitors not to defecate in the surrounding grounds. This sign is only written in Mandarin Chinese. No other nationality, it appears, needs to be reminded where it is and is not appropriate to shit in the vicinity of metropolitan France’s art museums.”

        https://www.vice.com/da/article/gqnzxj/are-chinese-tourists-the-worst-tourists-in-the-world

        • Another b.s story from Geoff “24 cents short of a quarter” PR. The Chinese tourists who visit Paris actually spend a ton of money and are not savages who shit in public, be it in front of the Louvre or anywhere else. France is too busy dealing with illegals from Africa and Romanian gypsies anyway. Your legitimate hatred of the Chinese government is making you lose it. I am sure if you were to visit Paris, they’d have to put a lot of interesting signs just for Geoff.

        • “Another b.s story from Geoff “24 cents short of a quarter” PR. The Chinese tourists who visit Paris actually spend a ton of money and are not savages who shit in public, be it in front of the Louvre or anywhere else.”

          Lookie here! A gutless anonymous troll is triggered!

          Let’s dissect its little temper-tantrum, shall we? :

          Yes, they shit in public while on vacation, as the ‘Vice’ article lays out clearly, with sources :

          https://www.vice.com/da/article/gqnzxj/are-chinese-tourists-the-worst-tourists-in-the-world

          Are you calling them liars? You, who doesn’t have the BALLS to comment under your real name? You’re really gonna have to do better than that, jerkoff 🙂

          It’s an international problem, so bad, the Chinese government admits that it’s true.

          Here are those sources, jerkoff :

          “Chinese Government Publishes Guide on How to Avoid Being a Terrible Tourist

          “Don’t spit phlegm or gum, throw litter, urinate or defecate wherever you feel like it.”

          https://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/10/chinese-government-publishes-guide-on-how-to-avoid-being-a-terrible-tourist/280332/

          “For Chinese Tourists Behaving Badly, A Government Blacklist”

          https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2015/05/08/405183120/beijing-clamps-down-on-chinese-tourists-behaving-badly

          So the Chinese government is lying, jerkoff? 🙂

          Don’t you just hate it when you are shown to be a liar?

          Laughing at you is so much *fun*! 🙂

          Now, stamp your little feet like the two-year-old petulant, snot-nosed jerkoff that you are…

    • Yeah, I recall a couple years back some fool tried to take a selfie with a 2000 lb moose. Good grief. So his family got to watch while he was converted to dog food.

    • How do you know her politics. After three months of C19 and reading comment sections it is clear the the right is just the left with different opinions.

        • Hate to disappoint you but you Libertarians are just like Russian Social Revolutionaries in 1917. You are the leftwing of the left. You want to skip the transition phase and hop right to the abolition of the State.

  12. Extract: Stupid people die younger than intelligent people.

    “Longitudinal cohort study of childhood IQ and survival up to age 76”

    — Whalley and Deary (2001)

    • Unfortunately, she had already done all reproduction she would ever do, thus there were no positive effects from this.

    • LOL, no ones listening though, too many trolls here playing the fake Hooray Red team, Hooray Blue team to keep readers distracted that their rights are being gutted, and 2A rights are surely on the short list.

  18. Giving mouth to mouth to a rattle snake is a bad idea too, but hey, it’s a free world!

    • Thinking the same thing. I’d lay money this woman wasn’t on her first glass of wine when she decided to go wading with gators.

  20. We have them behind our house. Years back some woman was walking her cute little fluffy snack along the side of the creek and one took her up on the offer. We and another neighbor heard all the screaming and rushed back to find her in about 4 feet of water flailing around. It took several times of yelling at her to get the hell out of there before it or another comes before she finally realized what we were saying. Trapper came out that afternoon and trapped and removed the 12 foot alligator. Stomach contents showed it was the one who had killed her dog.

    I’ve been out there at night and seen their eyes glowing red in the water.

    • Had a client in Florida that enjoyed playing golf while doing business. At the first tee he would outline the Ground Rules. “Ground Rule #1: If you hit your ball within 10 feet of the water…….do not look for it…..forget it. Drop at the edge of the rough…no penalty.” Southern boys never had to ask for explanation. Northerners not so.

    • Huh, what?

      Looks my pet troll is back, the one the anal fascination of suppositories…

  24. Another article said that the woman “didn’t seem herself” and didn’t scream when she was attacked. Sounds like this could have been a suicide.

  25. Alligator wagging the woman! Trying to get vindication for “swamp people show”

  27. Mixing Alcohol, mental retardetion, and living remnants from the Jurassic period is a bad formula.
    File under: ‘Stupid Prizes’

  28. Another member of what I call the “Pet da priddy kitty” crowd. At least she was correct when she said “Well, I won’t do that again.” She didn’t!

  29. Some people never ask God in prayer to grant them wisdom and common sense. Here is an example of immense stupidity.

  30. 20 some odd years ago an 8 year old was taken at Jonathon Dickenson State park in Tequesta Florida. Came out the water and got him on the grass. Two deputies with ARs killed several before they found the right one and what was left of the boy.

    Those things mean business. I went canoeing there a few times and carried the nine every time. Better than an oar and a whistle. Up until then there had been no trouble and park people even said they were docile and wouldn’t bother people. They were quite wrong.

  32. I can’t remember if it was Arizona, New Mexico or Nevada but a recent retired and transplanted husband and wife from somewhere in the NE were driving and stopped to remove a snake from the roadway, so it would not get run over, they were promptly bitten by a large rattler and the husband died. Can’t fix stupid.

  33. “Covert said ‘I don’t look like a deer’ and reached to touch the alligator when the animal attacked, according to the report…”

    Knowledge is knowing that you are not the creatures normal prey. Wisdom would be knowing that the creature doesn’t care.

    It’s hard to teach wisdom. Had she survived with the loss of a leg, maybe she would have learned some.

  34. Some people are just prone to taking ‘stupid pills’ at the wrong time. Over in Yellowstone more tourists are killed by buffalo than grizzly bars. And they are all the same story getting way to close, touching close for pictures. Like the dad who tried to sit his 6 year old daughter on a resting big boar…but you can’t keep these people from the animals in cages at the fricking zoo, so … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvEbbsCR3R8

    • Yes, another Feather and Avil award winner. Those people that can “F”up an Anvil with a Feather!

  35. called it. I feel bad for the gator. Unfortunately, we do the same thing to big cats in CA all the time.

  37. Never wish ill on anyone, but since she poked the Bear/Gator and chose the path of natural selection, I hope she was a demorat!

  39. LarryinTX: In grade school in the early 1960s we were “taught” that crocodiles would attack man, but alligators were harmless to man. I never believed it. We were also “taught” that buzzards never attacked living animals or humans. That also is incorrect.

    • Well, I did go to high school in the early ’60s, so maybe I can claim that excuse. Still, I have *seen* an alligator, how could I be so stupid as to think that thing was not dangerous, never mind what some old-maid schoolteacher told me 55 years ago?

  40. Stupid lady: TAG! YOU’RE IT!
    Gator: CHOMP
    Stupid lady: You win…gurgle….gurgle…gurgle…

    Game over…..

  42. Stupid people are meant to die! I think this is great!!!! I only hope that there’s a rash of stupid Idiots will try the same thing.

  43. “Covert came to Kiawah Island, a gated community southeast of Charleston”

    Southeast of Charleston is the Atlantic Ocean. Just sayin…..

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