Near a bar in Florida, an alligator attacked a man: his arm was amputated

On May 21, Jordan Rivera, 23, fell into the pond behind the Banditos bar in Port Charlotte, Florida and lost his arm after being attacked by an alligator, reports USAToday.

Photo: IStock

The Charlotte County Fire Department and EMS received a call about the attack around 1:40 a.m., Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission (FWC) spokesman Todd Dunn said.

According to Dunn, rescuers performed an "amputation of the upper right limb above the elbow" on the man and took him by helicopter to the Gulf Coast Hospital in Fort Myers.

"I didn't lose my life, I lost my arm"

Manny Hidalgo, a visitor to another bar, said he heard the man's screams and went outside looking for him near the pond.

“He was screaming and swimming toward the shoreline,” Hidalgo said. “I ran and pulled him onto the sand. I was afraid to go near the water because it was dark outside.”

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Rescuers removed the three-meter alligator from the area, and he was "humanely euthanized," as stated in the conservation of wildlife.

“These alligators, I didn’t really understand them until I woke up in the hospital and heard, ‘Oh, the alligator got your hand,’” Rivera said from his hospital bed in the intensive care unit at the Gulf Coast Medical Center.

"I didn't lose my life, I lost my arm, it's not the end of the world, you know," Rivera said.

His mother, Teresa, is also optimistic, reports NBC2.

“The most important thing is that he is alive. Yes, the arm is torn off, very traumatic. But he is here,” Teresa Lessa said.

Rivera says he doesn't remember that evening well. But what he does remember is that all the toilets at the bar were full and the lines were very long. That's why he took a walk to the pond behind the bar to relieve himself.

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“So eventually I came to the pond. I found myself in the water. And that’s literally the last thing I remember,” he said.

“It was just kind of crazy. It was almost from the movie,” he said.

Alligator attacks in Florida

Several alligator attacks are reported in Florida each year, but fatalities are rarer.

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Last month, an alligator bit off the leg of a 72-year-old man at the Florida resort of Titusville. And in March, a man was attacked by a 2,5m alligator at his doorstep in Daytona Beach.

According to the 2022 FWC report in Florida:

• In 2022, people suffered 9 serious and 2 minor injuries due to alligator bites.
• In 2021, there were seven major and three minor alligator bite injuries.
• In 2020, there were eight major and four minor injuries.
• In 2019, there was one fatal assault, five serious and five minor injuries from alligator bites.
• In 2018, there was one fatal assault, nine major injuries and one minor bite.

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