A 69-year-old woman died after being attacked by an alligator while walking her dog in Hilton Head Island, a sector located in South Carolina, on Tuesday, Beaufort County authorities reported. This was reported by the news portal ABC 4 News.
Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office officials said a team of officers were dispatched to Brams Point Road to attend to a possible alligator victim in the area.
Upon arriving at the location of the event, officials found the body of a 69-year-old woman, who has not yet been publicly identified, on the shore of a lake.
Once reinforcements arrived, an alligator appeared near the body, police officers said, according to ABC 4 News.
Despite the presence of the alligator, officials managed to recover the victim’s body.
Investigations by the authorities indicated that the woman was walking her dog in the morning hours when she was suddenly attacked. It is still unknown if the alligator dragged her into the lake.
Officials from the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office, as well as the Hilton Head Island Fire Department, were involved in the security operation.
An autopsy is expected to be carried out on the victim’s body soon to determine the cause of death, although investigators have indicated that it was possibly due to the alligator attack.
According to information from ABC 4 News, this is the second fatal alligator attack in Beaufort County in less than a year.
In August 2022, an 88-year-old woman was attacked near her residence by an alligator that came from a lake.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), statistics show that fatal attacks by alligators in the southeastern United States are exceedingly rare, even though alligator attacks are extremely rare. Tragedies happen every once in a while.
From 1999 to 2019, only 10 people died from deadly alligator attacks in the American Southeast.
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