Man rescued from gator by deputies
Published: November 30, 2006
Authorities said a 45-year-old man was hospitalized after four sheriff’s deputies rescued him from the jaws of a nearly 12-foot alligator early Wednesday, while he was naked and high on crack cocaine. [When Alligators Laugh]
The Polk County deputies were responding to multiple calls about a man yelling for help at about 4 a.m. They said they could not shoot the animal because it was too dark and they might have hit the victim, the Sheriff’s Office said.
Adrian J. Apgar was taken to the hospital in critical condition with an apparent broken right arm, leg injuries and his left arm hanging by a tendon.
“It is an incredibly bacteria-filled environment that he was exposed to,” Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said.
It was not clear why Apgar was in the lake.
The deputies — Michael Parker, Billy Osborne, David Clements and Sgt. Andrew Williams — carried Apgar about 40 feet, up a steep incline and to an ambulance on shore. None of the four deputies was injured in the gator-infested waters.
They had to find the man by sound, while working in thick brush and cattails.
“I remember him saying, ‘I’m over here, get here quick, he’s still got me, he’s going to kill me, my arms are broken,’ ” Parker said.
The deputies’ boots sunk in mud with each step they took, and the water lapped chest-high on some. It took several efforts to get the 6-foot-1, 250-pound man out of Lake Parker, even after the gator let loose, because the deputies were exhausted.
At various points, one or two of the deputies were standing by, weapons pulled, on the lookout for other gators.
Apgar told them he felt at least one more in the water.
“I was holding my shotgun. It’s kind of hard to walk through that with a flashlight and a shotgun,” Parker said.
Osborne said he pulled Apgar while the gator gripped the victim’s lower half.
The reptile loosened his jaws and Osborne thought he was free, but the animal lunged again.
The deputies said they were scared, but didn’t have time to think.
“It was a human being, he was dying. He needed help,” Osborne said.
The alligator believed to have bitten the man was caught at about 1 p.m., roughly seven hours after Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission trappers set out bait. Though there’s no way to be certain it’s the right one, the animal caught was aggressive and found near the attack site.
“I said, ‘Well how big did you think the alligator was?’ (The deputies) said ‘about the size of a school bus,’ ” Judd said.
It took 15-20 minutes to pull Apgar to shore from the moment they arrived on scene, the deputies estimated.
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