Authorities in Orlando, Florida are searching for a 2-year-old boy who was dragged into the water by an alligator near Disney’s upscale Grand Floridian Resort & Spa.
It was a parents’ worst nightmare, played out before a father’s very eyes, as he was helpless to save his own son.
Sometime Tuesday evening a 2-year-old boy was snatched while wading on a beach by a 7- to 8-foot alligator.
The boy’s father tried in vain to rescue his son before the creature disappeared into the water and the search to find his son has been underway ever since…the hope of the child’s survival is now very remote.
It was like a nightmare in a horror film, a surreal moment in time where one of nature’s fiercest predators emerged from the water and captured an unsuspecting child and parent off guard, stealing away with the child like a thief in the night.
More than 50 officers from the Orange County Sheriff’s office and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission are involved in the search at the lake outside Orlando, Fla., Demings said. Disney, meanwhile, said it had closed all beaches in its resort area.
Officials said they removed four alligators from the lagoon but found no evidence of the child, the reptiles will be euthanized to determine if they were involved in the incident by searching the contents of their stomachs for any human remains.
Wildlife officials investigate around a dozen alligator bites a year in Florida, but fatalities from the reptiles are far less common. There have been only 23 fatalities caused by alligators in Florida since the 1940s. Tuesday’s incident is the first known alligator attack at the Seven Seas Lagoon, a devastating introduction to gator dangers for the family friendly Disney resort.
UPDATE:
The gator that committed the attack has been captured, and the 2-year old-boy found dead.
The body of the boy, Lane Graves, was found intact about 1:45 p.m. Florida time, not far from where the boy was grabbed Tuesday night, it is presumed he drowned.
