Huge Alligator Trapped Girl On Tree, Fatally Shot By Deputy During Rescue

A massive alligator chased a girl up a tree in Lake County, Florida, on Friday afternoon and was later fatally shot by a deputy who arrived at the scene to rescue the 15-year-old. Jordan Broderick was cornered in a tree by a 10-foot-long alligator who had been waiting for an hour for the girl to come down the tree.

"My daughter's stuck in a frickin' tree and there's gators surrounding her!" Broderick's mother reportedly told a 911 dispatcher. "Oh my God! Please hurry! Please hurry!"

A Florida deputy, identified as Mitch Blackmon, arrived at the scene and found the teen yelling she was tired from hanging onto a tree branch. The teenager had been swimming in a creek in Ocala National Forest when the incident took place.

“I heard a female screaming and ultimately located her in a tree which overhung the creek,” the police report stated. “As I approached the base of the tree I heard a loud hissing which confirmed that an alligator was nearby.” Blackmon wrote that his "presence failed to scare the alligator away, and it began encroaching on my area at which time I fired one single 223 round from my Bushmaster AR15 killing the alligator."

The alligator reportedly sank into the water and didn't resurface which made the deputy believe that the reptile was dead. Later, a county marine biologist confirmed the alligator was dead. The girl was helped down from the tree and taken to safety without any injuries.

In Florida, alligator sightings are very common and sometimes they are seen strolling around the neighborhood. However, it is rare that a human comes in such close contact with a gator. About one-quarter of the estimated 5 million American gators living in southeastern U.S. are found in Florida.

In a recent incident, a boy in southern Florida was seen playing with an inflatable alligator while a real gator lurked just a few feet away. A video of the incident shows the moment the 6-year-old had a close encounter with the alligator in the backyard of his Orlando home.

"I saw the brown chair move. Oh my God... Never would I expect [an alligator] so close to us," the child's mother Nicole Mojica told local media at the time. "They say they are afraid. Well, he wasn't. And he went down the slip n' slide and into the pond."

Last month, police in Florida said that a missing woman was believed to have been dragged into a pond by an alligator. The woman was reportedly walking her dogs near a pond in Davie, Florida, before she disappeared.

So far, there have been 22 deaths directly attributed to alligator attacks in Florida since 1948, according to the Sun-Sentinel.