In a 911 call made moments after a Florida teenager was getting attacked by an alligator, a young man’s voice can be heard desperately asking for help.
“A gator just got my friend and he’s in the water,” the caller tells the dispatcher, according to the released 911 call.
“We were swimming in the river and he was bit in the middle of the river but he got out on the other side of the land,” he says.
Kaleb Langdale, 17, lost his right arm below the elbow but managed to survive Monday’s attack.
His arm, found inside the 11-foot gator before it was hunted down and killed by wildlife officials, could not be reattached.
Langdale said he and his friends were swimming across the Caloosahatchee River near Moore Haven when they spotted an alligator heading straight at him. He said he told his friends to get back as he tried to stop the alligator from attacking.
“I take my left hand and I grab that skin up underneath him, trying to control him, and he just kept going and I pulled his head up and I wrapped my legs around him and he just went ahead and dove,” Langdale said. “I was trying to hold on to him so he couldn’t bite me.”
The two wrestled and at some point, the gator got hold the teen’s arm.
"Well, he started pulling me down, and I knew it's either this bone, I've got to lose this arm or I am going to die,” he said.
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During the 911 call, inaudible shouts and screams can be heard as the caller tells the dispatcher he is heading to the other side of the river to tend to his friend.
“He got out of the water. I don’t know what he did but a person stopped for him on the other side of the river for him. I can’t tell them to stay there for the ambulance, I don’t know what to do ma’am,” the caller tells the dispatcher.
Langdale was able to stop the bleeding before he was rushed to a Fort Myers hospital.
"I am glad it went after me, chose me instead of one of my friends cause I don't think they would've done the same thing and got out of it,” he said.
Officials said though it’s rare for gators to bite people, they are more active and aggressive this time of year because it’s mating season.
