A 61-year-old woman was killed on Tuesday when an alligator told about the canoe that she and her husband paddled in Central Florida and attacked her after they fell into the water, the authorities said.
The attack took place just after 4 p.m. where Tiger Creek Lake Kissimmee met in Polk County, south of Orlando, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said at a news conference On Wednesday.
Major Evan Laskowski said that the woman, Cynthia Diekema, Van Davenport, Fla., With her husband in about 2.5 feet was canoeing “when their canoe passed over a large alligator.”
The alligator “then” turned the canoe, “said Major Laskowski and threw the couple into the water.
“She ended up in the water on top of the alligator and was bitten,” he added, and noticed that her husband was trying to intervene but was not successful. The Gator, the authorities of which said it was 11 feet 4 centimeters long, pulled her under water.
Mrs. Diekema’s body was later restored from the water.
Major Laskowski said alligatortrappers were sent to the area, where they won two alligators on Tuesday evening.
One was more than 11 feet long, which corresponded to “the length and description of the alligator involved in the incident,” he said. The second Gator was about 10 to 11 feet long. It was not immediately clear whether the Gators were euthanized.
Proof of the alligators will be used to determine whether they were involved in the fatal attack, said Roger Young, the executive director of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, at the press conference.
While alligator attacks on people are ‘extremely rare’, they do happen, Mr. Young said.
“This serves as a gloomy memory of the powerful animals in the wild that our natural spaces share,” he said.
The alligator population of Florida, which is a million, is one of the largest alligator populations in the United States.
The Florida Wildlife Commission reported that the state On average eight did not -led alligator bites per year During the 10 -year period that ended in 2022, many of them serious enough to require medical help.
At the beginning of March, a woman who paddled in the same waterway where Mrs. Diekema was killed was attacked by an eight-foot alligator that bit her elbow, according to the committee.
She was flown to a hospital where she was treated for her injury, according to Local News reports.
The state of nature committee has insisted people To get caution in or near the water during the mating season of the Alligator, which runs from the beginning of April to June. The risk of an attack is higher, it says, because in this period Gators tend to be more aggressive, more active and more visible.
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