Woman bitten by alligator OK; video of event goes viral
Alligator handler Lindsey Bull walked away with only minor injuries after an alligator named Darth Gator clamped down on her hand and dragged her into a death roll.
It happened at a petting zoo in Utah, and video of the incident has since gone viral.
Bull told her story to South Florida alligator experts Chris Gillette and Gabby Scampone this weekend.
Bull has worked with 11-year-old Darth at Utah’s Tails and Scales petting zoo for more than three years. She explained that she was doing an alligator feeding in front of a group of children gathered for a tour when things went wrong.
The kids were watching from behind protective glass when Darth chomped down on Bull’s hand.
Bull said it happened when she went to push the gator back into the water during the feeding, as normal, but “didn’t get [her] hand out of the way fast enough.”
Though it appeared that Darth bit down and dragged Bull into the water tank, she said she got in tank with him because if he began to roll and she didn’t move with him, she might lose her hand.
Sure enough, Darth began several rolls, pulling Bull under the water.
A man who was part of the tour group happened to have experience handling pythons. He leapt into the tank and got on Darth’s back in order to hold the reptile down.
But it wasn’t over. Bull said that it became “a waiting game at that point” as far as when Darth would decide to open his jaws so she could free her hand.
She told Gillette and Scampone that she’ll need surgery on her hand, but says she’s recovering well and “in good spirits, for sure.”
She appeared via Zoom with a cast on her hand, and could move all of her fingers.
The gator bite severed one of the tendons in the back of her wrist “about 80%” and chipped a “little bone in [her] thumb,” she said.