There was another alligator sighting in a South Florida neighborhood Tuesday — this time, Miami-Dade Police got to it before it got to someone else.
Police said they received a call Tuesday that an alligator was out of the water at Southwest 136th Street and 97th Avenue. It crossed the street into a field. Officers had to act fast.
"My concern was that the gator needed to be contained so it wouldn’t leave the area and possibly harm a child or someone walking their dog,” Officer Manuel Orol said. "I just made a split-second decision."
Orol pulled out a tow rope and did something he's never done before.
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"I was able to lasso it around its top legs, and it was in the middle section where I was able to just hold it and secure it so it wouldn’t go out to the street,” Orol said.
Shortly after, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission secured the wild reptile, taping its mouth shut and securing its legs.
This latest capture comes a day after an alligator killed a woman in Fort Pierce.
Carol Thomas said her neighbor Gloria Serge was walking her dog near a lake when the alligator lunged out of the water and pulled her in. Thomas called 911 and tried to help.
“I just turned and I saw that Gloria was being attacked by a gator that had come out of the water and had her leg,” Thomas said. “I asked her to swim toward the boat, swim toward the boat to give her something and she said, 'I can’t, the alligator has me.'"
ZooMiami communications director and wildlife expert Ron Magill said gator attacks are rare.
"They do not have the intelligence to say 'I’m going to attack this person,'” Magill said. “They really don’t want anything to do with humans, which is why more often than not when there is an alligator attack, we end up finding a dead body, but they don’t find a dead body that’s been eaten. It’s usually a mistaken identity.”
In 2018, a woman’s body was found at a lake in the Silver Lakes Rotary Park in Davie after she was walking her dogs and had a run-in with a gator. In 2020, a man in Estero Florida saved his dog from the jaws of a small gator.
“If an alligator grabs your pet there’s not much you can do. Do not go into the water after that alligator,” Magill said. "Unfortunately, the tragedy is that you’ve lost your pet most likely, but don’t magnify the tragedy by losing your own life.”
As for Orol, he said he was just doing his job.
"I feel like I did what I'm supposed to do,” Orol said. “My main concern is the community and who I patrol for."
If you are concerned that a large gator in your area poses a threat to humans or pets, you can call the FWC nuisance alligator hotline at 866-FWC-GATOR.
