Shocking 911 calls from a neighbor revealed the frantic moments after an 85-year-old Florida woman was dragged into a canal and killed by an alligator this week.
"911, there's a woman in the lake, the alligator got her!" the woman says in the first 911 call. "The alligator got her! An alligator has a woman!"
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Authorities said the elderly woman was walking her dog on Monday afternoon beside a canal in a senior living community near Fort Pierce when the nearly 11-foot gator attacked the dog and then the woman.
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Asked by the 911 operator how big the gator is, and the nearly out of breath caller replies, "it's a huge gator, it's huge."
The woman can be heard yelling at others before she realizes her neighbor is gone.
"It's too late, it's too late! Oh my God!" she yells.
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"Did it pull her under?" the operator asks.
"Yes, oh no!" she responds.
The woman is transferred to a fire department operator and explains the situation again.
"You said an alligator pulled her in?" the second operator asks.
"Pulled her in the lake, I can't see her, I ran to get a pole to pull her out and I can't see her," the woman says.
"You don't see any of her body, nothing sticking out?" the operator asks.
"Nothing, I see a shoe, she was swimming toward me, I said 'come toward the bank,'" she replied. "I was trying to stick a pole out for her and I was pulling it at the same time. She's gone, she's gone."
The neighbor then describes how everything started.
"I just happened to look out my bedroom and saw her. She was walking her little dog and the gator grabbed the dog and she fell down," she said. "Oh my God, I couldn't do anything."
At one point, as the woman continues to repeatly say "Oh my God," the operator tries to calm her.
"I need you to calm down or you're going to end up needing a rescue too," the operator says.
Moments later, the woman said she spotted her neighbor's body.
"Oh I see her, she's floating. I see her, she's floating. I think she's gone, oh my God," she says.
The woman killed in the gator attack was identified Tuesday as Gloria Serge.
Officials said her dog survived the attack and the gator was later caught and removed from the community by a trapper.
ZooMiami Wildlife expert Ron Magill said attacks like Monday's are "extremely rare" but do happen.
"These are opportunistic feeders. They normally will use an ambush type of method where they stay close to shore and wait for something to come close enough to shore where they can then jump out very quickly which unfortunately is what happened in this instance," Magill said. "I’m sure that alligator was intentionally going after the dog and maybe in an effort to save her dog, this thing ended so tragically."
