FORT PIERCE, Fla. – We’re now hearing the chilling 911 call made after an elderly woman was attacked by an alligator Monday while walking her dog.
A neighbor who witnessed the attack in Fort Pierce called for help.
“911, there’s a woman in the lake, the alligator’s got her! … It’s a huge gator -- it’s huge!” the woman, identified only as Carol, screams. “Please hurry.”
“You don’t see any of her body, nothing sticking out?” the dispatcher asked.
“Nothing, I see a shoe, she was swimming toward me. I said, ‘Come to the banks.’ I was trying to stick a pole out to her and I was calling you at the same time, and I -- she’s gone.”
Authorities confirmed that Gloria Serge, 85, was killed in the gator attack.
Carol, 77, told reporters the attack happened just past noon on Monday.
“I heard kind of like a commotion,” she said. “I looked out and I saw the dog and I saw my neighbor.”
Carol first called 911 and ran, trying and hoping she could help.
“I just remember her coming up and pushing her hair out of her face and I’m saying, ‘Swim toward the paddle boat,’ and she said, ‘I can’t, the gator has me,’” Carol said.
“I got my longest Shepard’s hook to try to hook her or hit him or do something,” Carol continued. “Hit him on the nose or something. I couldn’t do anything, which haunts me right now.”
The victim’s body was recovered from the water, and a contracted nuisance alligator trapper captured the 11-foot-long alligator involved in the attack.
“(We) snagged him on the bottom and he never surfaced. He stayed down the whole time,” an FWC official said. “We were able to get a second hook in him and get a hard line in him so we could get him up.”
Neighbors told Local 10 News that they often see dozens of gators, of all sizes, at Spanish Lakes.
“We’re used to seeing them, but they’re usually not doing anything,” said Charles Hermann. “They just lay in the sun, so you wouldn’t expect it.”
But finding out about their neighbor’s death, which happened right behind their home, has left many people shocked.
“Oh my God, this is horrifying,” said Brigitte Hermann. “We won’t forget that.”
Authorities said the victim’s dog survived and is in good condition.
According to an incident report by the FWC, the alligator was euthanized after the attack.