An 85-year-old grandmother was out walking her dog when an 11-foot alligator burst out of a lake and dragged her into the water. Her neighbor, who tried to save her, has now shared the last thing she said.
85-year-old Gloria Serge lived in Spanish Lakes Fairways, Florida, a quiet 435-acre retirement community with a string of lakes running through it. Wild alligators live in those lakes, and residents are used to seeing them.
In February 2023 one of the alligators went for Serge’s Shih Tzu, Trooper. The 11-foot alligator lunged out of the water and snapped at the dog. It missed, and caught Serge by the ankle instead and pulled her into the lake.
Her neighbor and friend, Carol Thomas, saw the whole thing.
The horror Thomas saw from the bank
Thomas described the moment to the Daily Star. She heard something, looked over, and Serge was already down. Trooper was bolting up the hill. Then she saw the alligator come out of the water and clamp onto Serge’s leg.
Serge came up for air once and Thomas remembered her brushing the hair out of her eyes, one arm stretched out.
An overturned paddle boat was sitting in the lake. Thomas yelled at Serge to swim toward it, hoping she could shove it out far enough for her friend to grab on. Serge shouted back that she couldn’t. “The gator has me!”
Thomas grabbed a metal pole and tried to hit the alligator on the snout, but alas, it made no difference. Serge went under again and didn’t come back up. The alligator reportedly dragged her body to the bottom of the lake. Trooper got away without a single injury.
“There’s nothing you can do,” Thomas said. “Just kind of haunted by that, you know, I don’t know what else I could’ve done.”
Lakes with no one watching
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission later caught the alligator and had it killed. In Florida, alligators that attack people are almost always put down rather than moved. Relocated gators often find their way back, and one that has already gone after a person is treated as too dangerous to leave in the water.
The agency did however also tell residents in the area to keep away from the animals. They also admitted nobody supervised the lakes, and asked people to get in touch if they had concerns.
Amy Kight, executive director of Busch Wildlife Sanctuary in Jupiter, said people should keep at least 15 to 20 feet between themselves and any alligator.
“Do not feed them, do not mess with them, do not try to befriend them,” she said. “Let them live their life, you do yours and you shouldn’t run into any problems.”
At a press conference after the attack, Serge’s son talked about what losing her this way had done to him. “I never could have imagined the agonizing way that my mother spent the last moments of her life,” he said.
“The sudden, violent nature of this attack, thinking about my mom in her final moments, resulted in a whole different level of all-consuming grief.”
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