South Carolina Woman Dies After ‘Alligator Encounter’
Written by SOURCE on May 3, 2020
A woman died after an apparent run-in with an alligator on a South Carolina island.
On Friday at 5 p.m., deputies responded to a call on Kiawah Island of an “an alligator encounter with an adult female,” according to Capt. Roger Antonio, a spokesman for the Charleston County Sheriff’s Office. The Charleston Post and Courier reports that a deputy then shot and killed the alligator before recovering its body.
The Charleston County Coroner’s Office identified the woman as 58-year-old Cynthia Covert. The autopsy will is expected to be finished on Monday.
Deaths from alligator encounters in South Carolina are rare. The state’s first alligator fatality was in July 2016, when a 90-year-old woman was attacked in a pond outside an extended care facility. The state’s second fatal attack happened in August 2018, when a 45-year-old woman was killed at a resort on Hilton Head Island.
South Carolina has seen 20 alligator incidents since 1976. Besides the latest case, only the 2016 and 2018 cases were fatal.
