By Meghan Meyer
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 12, 2006
SUNRISE — Under a mess of highway overpasses where the Broward County suburbs meet the Everglades, a pig's lung tied to an empty soda bottle bobbed gently in a canal on Thursday afternoon.
Trappers hoped to catch an alligator with this bait, the alligator that killed a jogger early Wednesday.
They caught one later that night. Officials planned to do a necropsy today to find out whether the 7-foot-long alligator was the one that had killed 28-year-old Yovy Suarez Jimenez, said officer Jorge Pino of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
Suarez was the first person killed by an alligator in Broward County, and only the 18th in the state since the fish and wildlife commission started keeping records in the 1940s.
Despite a burgeoning population of both alligators and people, attacks have remained rare. In most cases, the victim swam in or walked near lakes or canals where alligators lived — in Florida, that's nearly any body of water except the ocean or Gulf of Mexico.
No one saw the attack on Suarez, and its details will are likely to stay a mystery. Still, officials took the opportunity to remind the public to be careful around the water.
"People have to learn to live with alligators," fish and wildlife investigator Skip Trubey said. "Give them a wide berth. Leave them alone."
Suarez, 28, left her home in a nearby mobile home park to go for a jog around 7 p.m. Tuesday, Sunrise police said. A path, popular with joggers and bicyclists, runs along State Road 84, separated from the canal by a dusty patch of gravel about 8 feet wide.
It runs through an area that wildlife officials have designated "open harvest" for alligators because it's so close to homes. That means trappers can remove any alligators they find, in an attempt to prevent them from bothering people, said biologist Lindsey Hord, who is the commission's statewide coordinator for nuisance alligators.
In the past year, trappers hadn't taken any alligators from the canal.
Officials couldn't track down witnesses who had earlier reported seeing someone matching Suarez's description dangling her feet over the canal, Pino said.
Investigators can't be sure that's when the attack occurred. The evidence showed Suarez was attacked by an 8- to 10-foot-long alligator very close to the water. Investigators didn't find pools of blood on the canal bank or on land nearby.
"She was pulled in, in my opinion," said Joshua Perper, chief medical examiner for Broward County. "If she had been dragged I would have expected to see grazing marks."
She died quickly, Perper said, of massive blood loss after the alligator broke one of her legs, ripped off one arm, and then the other. She didn't drown — Perper didn't find much water in her lungs.
He couldn't pinpoint an exact time of death, but said it happened sometime Wednesday morning, hours before the body, clothed in a jogging bra, shorts and sneakers, was recovered.
As Suarez's family prepared to file a missing-persons report Wednesday, they saw a story on the news about a body found in the canal near their home.
Construction workers saw the body Wednesday afternoon and called Sunrise police, who sent a team of divers to recover it. Her family identified her from photos.
Trubey suspected the alligator had been fed, and had lost its fear of humans. Wildlife officials have had problems with people feeding alligators near boat ramps despite signs warning them not to. There is a boat ramp several blocks from where Suarez's body was found.
While feeding alligators might make them lose some of their wariness, it doesn't mean an alligator that has never even seen a human won't try to attack it, Hord said. Usually, they will keep to themselves and shy away from people. But they are predators by nature. Under the right circumstances, a 10-foot alligator might see a human as prey. People living near canals, lakes and ponds must heed that, and be careful, he said.
"There's not necessarily a reason for an alligator to attack a person," Hord said. "They're predators. Predators eat things. That's not often something we're comfortable with, whether it's one of us or our pets."
Alligators tend to wander in May, the peak of mating season.
And while this attack happened near the Everglades, Hord said, that doesn't mean that city dwellers should throw caution to the wind. Alligators live everywhere. When developers build homes and golf courses on their swamp habitat, they'll move into the canals.
On Tuesday, a 5-foot-long alligator sunk its teeth into a 74-year-old retiree's ankle in Punta Gorda. She beat him off with a garden hose. Late last month, a 9-foot-long alligator attacked a man diving for stray balls in a golf course lake near Boynton Beach. He fought off the gator with a knife. It was later captured and killed.
"They're very adaptable animals," Hord said. "They have no problem living around us. It's up to the individual what tolerance he has for living around alligators."
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