Man breaks into croc pond, gets bit
Tries to escape hospital, but fails
ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. — A 23-year-old man was injured after breaking into an alligator farm in Florida and jumping into a pond full of crocodiles, police said.
Cops responding to reports of vandalism early Tuesday at the Alligator Farm Zoological Park found the underwear-clad man with an injured leg crawling across a nearby yard.
Officers found two rubber Croc shoes and a pair of shorts inside the newly opened Nile crocodile enclosure, St. Augustine police spokesman Cecilia Aiple told the Florida
Times-Union. They also saw a bloody trail leading to the top of a nearby structure. Outside, in a neighbouring yard, officers found Brandon Keith Hatfield. He was arrested, charged with vandalism and taken to a hospital where he tried to escape before getting caught in a retention pond lined with barbed wire, police said.
Hatfield told investigators he had been bit by an alligator, but they pieced together the details.
“He … took a jump into a pond infested with big crocodiles,” Aiple said.
John Brueggen, director of the alligator farm, told the newspaper Hatfield apparently got inside the park on Monday night and damaged the snack bar before going into the crocodile enclosure, called Oasis on the Nile.
“He jumped off a 5- to 6-foot structure into about 2 feet of water, then climbed up on the 20-foot structure later, which we know from the blood trail,” Brueggen said. “In our 125-year history, this is the first time anyone has tried to go swimming with the crocodiles.”
According to the arrest report, security video showed a 2-metre crocodile lunging at the man, who escaped to the edge of the pool. When he sits on the bank of the pool, the “crocodile locks onto his left foot.”
Hatfield caused about $5,000 in damage, authorities said.