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Your support makes all the difference.A Florida man’s swim in Lake Thonotosassa took a nasty turn when he was bitten in the face by an alligator.
Juan Carlos La Verde, 34, was swimming at the lake outside Tampa when, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, the alligator struck.
People reported that Mr La Verde was transported to Tampa General Hospital for treatment following the bite.
The Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission did not share Mr La Verde’s condition but it said that has opened an investigation into the shocking incident.
Alligator attacks, while rare, have already claimed multiple lives this year. Two Floridians have died following alligator attacks, including an 80-year-old woman who was attacked after she fell into a lake at a golf course near her home. Another woman in South Carolina was also killed in an attack.
According to the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, this marks the deadliest year of alligator attacks in the state since 2006. According to a fact sheet updated last year, Florida usually sees eight alligator bites per year serious enough to require professional medical treatment, with the odds of a Florida resident suffering one of those bites coming in around one in 3.1 million.
The commission is responsible for running a nuisance alligator programme, which seeks to “proactively address alligator threats in developed areas while conserving alligators in areas where they naturally occur.”
Last year, some 9,500 alligators were killed in the state for threatening peoples’ well-being. The commission states that it does not attempt to relocate those nuisance alligators because the alligator population in Florida is so robust and because alligators tend to attempt to return to their capture site after being released.
Florida, whose flagship state university’s mascot is the Gator, is currently home to 1.3m of the reptiles.
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