ALLIGATORS: Get The Facts!

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Alligator Attacks And Kills Boy

TAVARES, Fla. -- For the past several days, the large alligator had been testing how close it could get to the Palm Gardens Marina, where a dock and a restaurant on the Dead River attract steady traffic through the adjoining mobile home park.

On Sunday, the alligator, anywhere from 8-feet to 11-feet long, swam within 30 feet of the dock. On Wednesday, it got right up against the marina's seawall.

But that didn't stop 12-year-old Bryan Jeffrey Griffin from plunging into his swimming hole late in the evening, near the marina where fisherman routinely clean their fish and sometimes throw the remains into the water.

Even when his two friends pulled him from the river after spotting the alligator close at hand, Bryan jumped right back in.

When his friends, including 14-year-old Justin VanGorder, tried pulling him out again, Bryan hit them and told them he wanted to swim. He splashed around for a few more seconds and got about 20 feet from shore.

"We saw gators all day," said Justin. "Every time we saw them, we would get out of the water."

Justin said he and the other boy saw some alligators and got out of the water, but Brian wouldn't get out.

"We screamed at him to get out, but he wouldn't," Justin said.

Then he disappeared under the dark water.

At first, his friends thought he was horsing around. But they quickly learned he was in trouble when he resurfaced and shouted, "Help! Help! I don't want to go!"

He disappeared again. The last time his friends saw him was when the alligator resurfaced in bloody water with Bryan clamped inside its mouth.

Sheriff's deputies and wildlife officers on Thursday killed seven alligators in the river, hoping one of them was the one that killed Bryan. The alligators were between 8 and 11 feet long, said Lake County Sheriff's spokesman Lt. Nick Pallitto.

The alligators were shipped to biology laboratories, where they will be examined to determined which one killed the boy.

"They feel fairly confident that one of the gators is the one responsible," Pallitto said.

Joy Hill, spokeswoman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, said three of the animals were taken to nearby Eustis, the others to Gainesville.

"We will certainly be looking for any sort of human tissue," Hill said. "We'll also be looking at bite patterns and looking for fibers possibly stuck in the teeth."

To be on the safe side, trappers planned to search for more alligators in the half-mile river channel Thursday night and kill any larger than eight feet.

After Bryan disappeared underwater for the last time, the boys ran to the house of Keith Buse, who owns and manages the marina.

"I ran out to my truck, got my pistol and had my wife call 911," Buse said. "The gator stayed under water."

Bryan had been under for at least 25 minutes before a sheriff's office helicopter spotted him and dropped a buoy to guide deputies, who pulled him up. The boy was pronounced dead at Leesburg Regional Medical Center at 9:19 p.m., deputies said.

Buse said he had filed a nuisance alligator complaint Wednesday afternoon with the Conservation Commission, the only agency allowed to remove alligators deemed a threat to people.

"Generally, they stay across the river," he said. "But this one was getting close and looking strange."

No one was at Bryan's home on Thursday.

Since 1948, there have been 325 documented alligator attacks on humans in Florida, including 12 fatal attacks, according to the Conservation Commission. This was the first ever recorded in Lake County.

It happened as dangerous encounters with alligators are escalating with the end of mating season and the beginning of summer's torrential rain showers. Although alligators rarely attack humans, authorities said they are dealing with more complaints because so many of the reptiles are turning up around rain-bloated retention ponds, ditches and canals.

On Sunday, an 400-pound alligator killed a 120-pound dog along the Little Wekiva River in Altamonte Springs.