A massive alligator was caught Friday carrying the lifeless body of a Floridian down a canal.
A witness first spotted the 14-foot reptile with its victim clenched between its jaws on a residential street in Largo, a small community just four miles south of Clearwater.
“I could tell there was a body in his mouth, so I started recording,” witness JaMarcus Bullard told Spectrum Bay News 9.
Bullard, who was on his way to a job interview, alerted the Largo Fire Department, which was stationed just steps away from the gory scene.
Emergency personnel quickly pulled the gator from the water and shot it “a few times,” Bullard said.
“A lot of my neighbors were out here and they’re the ones that told me about the gator,” area resident Jennifer Dean told the outlet.
“While we were standing here we heard a shot, I assume they killed the gator.”
The Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office confirmed that both the victim and the gator were yanked from the canal, but refused to say whether they were the ones who pulled the trigger.
At the scene, investigators were standing next to the bloodied gator, which appeared to be at least 10 feet in length.
The area is near the popular Ridgecrest Park, which includes a 5-acre lake known to house alligators.
The gators routinely wander the neighborhood, according to Dean, but the one killed Friday was one of the biggest she ever encountered.
Investigators are still trying to determine the Floridian’s cause of death.
