Bar customer rushes to help man during Florida alligator attack after hearing screams
A man was sitting at a bar in Florida when he heard someone screaming, he told media outlets.
Manny Hidalgo, 23, went outside of the Banditos Bar in Port Charlotte to look for the source of the screams in the darkness of the night on May 24, the Associated Press reported. He found a man flailing in the water after being attacked by an alligator, the outlet reported.
The victim of the attack was identified as Jordan Rivera, WBBH reported. The man had left the bar to use the bathroom near the shore.
“So I ended up walking over to the water hole. I didn’t realize how big it was at the time. As I was going over there something happened where I either tripped or the ground below me just went down,” Rivera told the media outlet. “I ended up in the water. And that’s literally the last thing I remember.”
That’s when Hidalgo heard the screams and rushed to help, he told The Daily Sun.
“He was yelling and swimming toward the shoreline,” Hidalgo told the news outlet. “I ran and dragged him up onto the sand. I was scared to get close to the water because it was dark out.”
Rivera was taken by helicopter to a hospital, where his arm was amputated, FOX News reported.
The alligator, which was more than 10 feet long, was euthanized, FOX News said.
Rivera told WBBH he wanted to thank Hidalgo for helping save him.
“The first thing I would do is shake the man’s hand,” he said.
Florida has about 1.3 million alligators, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conversation Commission. To learn more about alligator safety, visit the commission’s resource page.
Port Charlotte is 100 miles south of Tampa.
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