Florida is a dream retirement destination with its warm weather and sunshine.
But enjoying the golden years in the Sunshine State can come with surprises.
And a Florida grandma found herself in this scary fight for her life walking her dog.
84-year-old Florida woman survives battle with an alligator
Dolores Boppel, an 84-year-old from North Fort Myers, Florida was on an evening walk with her Shih Tzu named Queen when she encountered an alligator.
She walked past a pond when an alligator that was more than seven feet long attacked her and her dog.
Boppel threw her dog away to safety as soon as the alligator began to attack her.
“I opened up the window to let the heat out and I heard somebody screaming and screaming,” neighbor Patty Cuppy told WINK News.
“She was walking the dog. When I got here, the dog was covered in blood. Her leg is completely exposed,” Cuppy recalled, describing Boppel’s injuries. “She was very calm, very collected. This is an 84-year-old woman.”
Boppel landed a punch on the alligator and was able to escape.
“The gator got her leg and started to drag her down towards the water, so she just started kicking with her left leg and hit it in the snout and kept fighting and fighting the gator,” Cuppy said. “She told me, ‘I knew if it got me to the water, I wasn’t going to make it.’”
The Lee County Sheriff’s Office responded to the attack and took Boppel to a local hospital.
Like being hit with a torpedo
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) found the alligator, which was seven feet, three inches long.
“The FWC, the Lee County Sheriff’s Office, and Lee County EMS all responded to the scene, and a contracted nuisance alligator trapper removed a 7’3″ alligator,” the FWC stated. “The victim was transported to the hospital to be treated for her injuries.”
FWC officials said that the alligator was “humanely euthanized” because of the attack.
Boppel suffered serious injuries in her hand, arm, and leg but was in good spirits after the terrifying incident.
“It was like a torpedo,” Boppel told WBBH. “I didn’t see anything go that fast in my life. I didn’t have time to think.”
She said she got closer to the pond near where she lives than she normally did during the walk.
“All of a sudden, I had a premonition, I’m telling you,” Boppel recalled. “It was like, ‘Uh-oh.’”
Her dog Queen was unharmed during the attack.
Neighbors told WINK News they had seen the alligator in the area before.
“The gator is in my sideyard all the time,” a neighbor said. “There’s one, and then there’s a little, a smaller one, but this was the bigger one.”
Neighbor Mark Burlingham said that Boppel was lucky to escape the attack with her life.
“He was a thick gator,” Burlingham said. “She’s lucky she didn’t lose her life.”
Alligator attacks in Florida are rare but when they happen it is an instance of sheer terror.
DeSantis Daily will keep you up-to-date on any new developments in this ongoing story.
