died in an attack<\/a> over the weekend, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.<\/p>\nFWC said the “incredibly tragic” incident happened around 1:30 p.m. Sunday in the Econlockhatchee River in the Little Big Econ State Forest in Central Florida.<\/p>\n
The Orlando woman was hiking with her boyfriend and best friend when the group decided to go for a swim to cool off.<\/p>\n
She was kneeling in about 3 feet of water when an alligator approached her and bit both of her arms, FWC Public Information Officer Chad Weber said at a news conference on Monday.<\/p>\n
He said the woman’s boyfriend “was trying to get her from the alligator\u2019s mouth” before calling 911. The woman died from her injuries on the way to the hospital.<\/p>\n
The Seminole County Sheriff’s Office responded along with the Florida Forest Service and the FWC. Using helicopters, the agencies tracked down and harvested two large alligators in the area.\u00a0<\/p>\n
One 13-foot alligator was harvested at the scene, while a 12-foot alligator was harvested a short distance away, said FWC Lieutenant Grant Eller. The agency is working to complete DNA analysis on the gators to determine whether one of them was involved in the attack.<\/p>\n
The wildlife officials said there’s no plan to restrict swimming in the river where the attack happened.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the state of Florida, obviously, we have alligators in all 67 counties. Every body of water could potentially have an alligator in it. So, to say that we\u2019re gonna close one area versus another, you know, we\u2019d have to check with forestry,” Weber said.<\/p>\n
While deadly alligator attacks are rare in Florida, Eller urged people to “be mindful” in the water as alligators can be territorial during mating season, which ends in June.<\/p>\n
FWC is not identifying the woman until her family is notified.<\/p>\n
“First and foremost, the FWC wants to extend its condolences to the family,” Weber said. “It\u2019s a very tragic time.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Florida wildlife officials say the 31-year-old woman’s boyfriend “was trying to get her from the alligator\u2019s mouth” before…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":324424,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-324423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324423\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}