‘Toddler killed by alligator at Disney resort’
Print Edition
FLORIDA authorities believe there is “no question” the 2-year-old boy dragged into a man-made lake by an alligator at a Disney resort hotel in Florida is dead, Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings said yesterday.
Rescuers were still working to recover the body.
“We’re 15 hours in,” Demings said. “We know that that happened and it certainly is not survivable at this point for him to have been submerged for this period of time.”
“There’s no question they will lose a two-year-old child,” he said of the boy’s family, who had come to Florida from Nebraska for a vacation.
Walt Disney World closed beaches at its Florida resorts while dozens of rescuers searched a lagoon for the body the boy who was snatched off the shore and dragged underwater by an alligator as his father tried to fight off the reptile.
Wildlife officials removed four alligators from the water and cut them open, authorities said, but they didn’t find any sign of the boy.
Wildlife officials said the attack was a rarity in a state with a gator population estimated at around 1 million.
The family of five from Nebraska was on vacation at the Seven Seas Lagoon outside a resort around nightfall Tuesday when the child waded no more than 1 or 2 feet into the water and was taken from a small beach, sheriff’s and state wildlife officials said.
The boy’s father desperately tried to save him, suffering lacerations on a hand. Neither could a lifeguard who was nearby.
“No swimming” signs were posted at the beach.
Demings said there had been no other similar alligator attacks on the lake.
Nick Wiley with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said witnesses estimated the alligator at between 4 feet and 7 feet in length.
He said none of the four alligators removed from the water showed any signs of having been in contact with the boy.
The beach area where the animal grabbed the child is part of the luxury Grand Floridian resort, across the lake from Disney’s Magic Kingdom theme park. The man-made lake stretches about 200 acres and reaches a depth of 14 feet. The lake feeds into a series of canals that wind through the entire Disney property.
More than 50 law enforcement personnel searched the well-tended lagoon along with an alligator tracker and marine units equipped with sonar to search the lake’s sandy, mostly flat bottom.
Though Florida has grown to the third-most populous state, fatal alligator attacks remain rare. There have been 23 fatalities caused by wild alligators in Florida since 1973, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Those fatalities were among 383 unprovoked bites not caused by someone handling or intentionally harassing an alligator.
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