A woman walking her dog on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina was the victim of a fatal alligator attack on Tuesday morning, July 4.
The horrible incident is the second deadly encounter with an alligator within a year in Beaufort County.
Around 9:30 am, a distress call regarding a possible alligator attack was made from a lagoon adjacent to a golf course in the Spanish Wells community. The Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office responded to the call and found a 69-year-old woman unconscious.
The woman’s body was being guarded by an alligator, which hampered the initial rescue efforts. However, quick action led to the alligator’s removal from the site, and the woman’s body was recovered.
Preliminary investigation indicated that the woman was walking her dog, which was later found safe, when the alligator attacked. The Beaufort County Coroner’s Office will perform an autopsy to ascertain the exact cause of the woman’s death.
Just less than a year ago, a similar incident occurred when an 88-year-old woman from Sun City was fatally attacked by an alligator near her home on August 15.
Notably, fatal alligator attacks were previously unknown in South Carolina. But in 2020, a 58-year-old woman was killed on Kiawah Island by an alligator, which was later fatally shot by deputies. In 2019, a man was found dead on Kiawah Island with what were suspected to be alligator bite marks, though his cause of death was not definitively determined. There were also attacks reported in 2016 and 2018.
South Carolina had never documented a fatality from an alligator attack until these incidents.