Newly released law enforcement body camera footage revealed the horrifying moments following a nearly 14-foot alligator’s deadly attack on a 41-year-old woman in Florida last September.
The footage, secured from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) by Fox 13, captures first responders arriving at a roadside canal in Largo, Florida, and ruthlessly shooting the beast with a rifle.
Bystander Jamarcus Bullard stumbled upon the macabre scene and immediately alerted law enforcement after witnessing the monstrous gator clutching what he believed to be human body parts in its jaws.
“I saw it had a body in its mouth, like a lower torso, so I sprinted to the fire department for help. They confirmed it was a human body,” Bullard recounted to the station.
The victim was identified as Sabrina Peckham, an unhoused woman living at a makeshift campsite mere feet from the deadly canal in Pinellas County. Her family last saw her the day before the gruesome encounter.
“Here’s the camp where her ID was discovered,” an FWC officer says on the footage, inspecting the trash-littered site. “No signs of an alligator here.”
Officers dragged the monstrous gator from the canal using ropes and chains, eventually cutting it open to retrieve parts of Peckham’s remains.
The fatal incident occurred in McKay Creek, linking Ridgecrest Lake and Taylor Lake. At the time, the latter was drained for maintenance.
In 2022, an alligator fatally attacked a man diving for a frisbee in Taylor Lake. Now, fencing and warning signs surround the area where Peckham met her tragic end.
Though lethal alligator attacks on humans are rare, Peckham’s death marks the third such incident in Pinellas County since the 1970s, according to the FWC.
Watch the video below via FOX 35 Orlando.
