According to CBS News, authorities have reported that an alligator attacked and killed a woman while walking with her dog in the Spanish Wells community on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. This incident marks the second fatal alligator attack in less than a year.
The Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office responded to a report of a possible alligator attack near a lagoon bordering a golf course in the Spanish Wells community on Tuesday morning around 9:30 am. When officials arrived at the scene, they found a 69-year-old community resident at the lagoon’s edge, appearing unresponsive.
The sheriff’s office stated that rescue efforts were hindered by the presence of an alligator guarding the woman. The alligator was safely removed, and the woman’s body was recovered.
The South Carolina Department of Natural Resources tweeted that biologists and officers were responding to the incident.
This unfortunate incident follows a similar occurrence on August 15 last year, when an 88-year-old woman was killed by an alligator near her home in Sun City.
Until recent years, fatal alligator attacks in South Carolina had not been reported. However, in 2020, deputies had to shoot and kill an alligator that fatally attacked a 58-year-old woman on Kiawah Island. In 2019, authorities discovered a man dead on Kiawah Island with what appeared to be alligator bite marks, though it remained unclear how the man initially died.
Other incidents include a 90-year-old woman who walked out of a Charleston nursing home in 2016 and was killed by an alligator and a fatal attack on a 45-year-old woman walking her dog on Hilton Head Island in August 2018.
Before these attacks, South Carolina had never recorded a fatal alligator attack on a person.
