Florida man loses arm to 10-foot alligator while peeing behind a bar

The gator bit off his right arm just above the elbow.

click to enlarge Florida man loses arm to 10-foot alligator while peeing behind a bar
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Florida officials say a man lost his arm to a large alligator behind a bar early Sunday morning.

According to  WBBH,  23-year-old Englewood resident Jordan Rivera wandered behind Bandito's Bar in Port Charlotte to relieve himself shortly after closing time, when he fell into a pond and was immediately attacked by a 10-foot alligator.

Though the gator bit off his right arm just above the elbow, Rivera was saved by bystanders who pulled him out and quickly applied a tourniquet to the injury.

Rivera says he doesn't remember any of it.

“So I ended up walking over to the water hole, I didn’t realize how big it was at the time, as I was going over there something happened where I either tripped or the ground below me just went down,” said Rivera to the station. “I ended up in the water. And that’s literally the last thing I remember.”
In a statement, officials with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC)  say that an alligator that was 10 feet and five inches long was removed from the pond and “humanely killed."

 According to the FWC, alligator mating season typically runs from May to June, depending on temperatures. So, it's not uncommon to see large gators wandering around in unusual places looking for love.

There are roughly 1.3 million alligators in the state of Florida, says the FWC, and they can be found in all 67 counties.

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Colin Wolf

Colin Wolf has been working with weekly newspapers since 2007 and has been the Digital Editor for Creative Loafing Tampa since 2019. He is also the Director of Digital Content Strategy for CL's parent company, Chava Communications.
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