Imagine living 90 years, only to become Purina Lizard Chow.
Bonnie Walker was reported missing Wednesday morning from Brookdale Charleston, the West Ashley assisted-living facility where she was a resident. Her body was found in a retention pond behind the property a few hours later.
The Charleston County Coroner’s Office ruled her death accidental. The cause was “multiple sharp and blunt force injuries” consistent with those made by an alligator.
Robert McCullough, a spokesman for DNR, confirmed Friday afternoon that the case was the first time an alligator-related incident in the state had turned fatal.
“It’s the first one as far as we’ve been keeping records,” he said.
Agency staff completed a necropsy on the alligator and confirmed it was involved in Walker’s death. They turned it over to the coroner’s office.
“The injuries are consistent with those which could be inflicted by an alligator and our investigation has confirmed that an alligator was involved in the decedent’s death,” said Coroner Rae Wooten.
Investigators believe Walker slipped and fell down a steep embankment and landed in the water, attracting the alligator’s attention.
There were only about three hours elapsed between her disappearance and the recovery of her body by police divers.
While gator attacks do make the news, they’re actually quite rare, especially fatal attacks. Gators are native to all the coastal states of the former Confederacy, except for North Carolina, but most of these states have never seen a fatal attack, and they’re rarer than you might think even in the gator-attack capital of the world, Florida:
Florida has seen 23 fatal alligator attacks since 1948, including the recent death of a boy at a pond outside Disney World, according to a June 15 Orlando Sentinel story.
If a gator attacks you, you’re just really supremely unlucky.
Kevin was a former Special Forces weapons man (MOS 18B, before the 18 series, 11B with Skill Qualification Indicator of S). His focus was on weapons: their history, effects and employment. He started WeaponsMan.com in 2011 and operated it until he passed away in 2017. His work is being preserved here at the request of his family.
5 thoughts on “When Guns are Outlawed, Only Outlaws will have Gators”
On the other hand, the Australian crocodile chows down on careless locals and tourists alike with such great regularity that it’s almost considered a natural death.. We’ve averaged about 2.5 attacks per year over the last 40 years, and about 5 per year since 2004. There was an attack a few weeks ago where a woman had gone north to mourn the death of a friend. She decided to mourn and swim next to a sign warning people not to swim, and was consequently eaten.
There are places in the world where humans ain’t at the top of the food chain, and Australia has many such places. You ignore the risks at your peril.
I heard that they have recently found Nile Crocodiles in Florida. They behave like our Salties. I hope they are successful in removing them before they get established.
Florida has had 23 known fatal alligator attacks since 1948.
But if Br’er Gator eats all of you, he seldom waddles down to the local constabulary to report his meal and turn himself in.
You simply become one of the state’s countless “missing persons”.
Between gators and feral hogs, expecting any accuracy from this sort of statistic is a forlorn venture.
There are similarly multiple stories of persons adrift at sea pushed to shore by playful/helpful porpoises. (Porpoissi?)
But only because the ones that might have been pushed out to sea instead never got to give equal time for the rest of the story.
And with due respect for next of kin, given what passes for care in most elder prisons, the decedent probably got a better exit that what would otherwise be expected.
As a bonus for both the PETA-tards and Earth Day loons, she went out “green”, and got recycled into the biosphere. But hopefully not kicking and thrashing at the end, though.
“Gators are native to all the coastal states of the former Confederacy, except for North Carolina…”
I think you meant Virginia. Gators are pretty common in coastal North Carolina.
“If a gator attacks you, you’re just really supremely unlucky.”
Or drunk/high (which isn’t the case here).
But as a former resident of FL, I noticed there was definitely a correlation in reports about gator attacks and people who seemed to be of an impaired state of mind and forgetting the cardinal rule of living in Florida and dealing with gators, being to assume all bodies of freshwater you cannot see the bottom of have at least one gator in them.
Granting, of course that correlation isn’t causality, etc, but it occurred often enough to appear relevant.