Alligator victim’s family files suit
The family of a Florida woman killed by an alligator last year as she walked her dog in her backyard is suing the housing complex’s owner, alleging its employees fed the gator and didn’t have it removed from the neighbourhood retention pond.
The family of Gloria Serge filed suit Thursday against the Wynne Building Corp, which owns the Spanish Lakes senior housing complex in Fort Pierce where she had lived for almost 30 years. Serge, an 85-year-old widow, drowned after a 3-metre alligator that residents had nicknamed “Henry” grabbed her by the ankle and dragged her into the retention pond where it had lived for months.
The family’s attorneys, Gary Lesser and Joshua Ferraro, told a press conference Spanish Lakes employees routinely fed
Henry, lessening its fear of humans, and never called the state hotline that summons trappers to remove potentially dangerous alligators. They also allege Spanish Lakes threatened to evict Serge if she walked her dog, Trooper, on the street, a violation of the complex’s rules. That left her no choice but to walk Trooper in her backyard next to the pond.
The company failed to warn residents about the alligators and installed docks and waterside benches, making Serge and other residents believe the reptiles posed no serious threat.
“This incident was 100 per cent preventable,” Lesser said. “If Spanish Lakes had taken any measure of commonsense, reasonable action, Gloria would be here today.”
Bill Serge, the victim’s 62-year-old son, said he and his four siblings have been emotionally devastated by how their mother died.
The lawsuit, filed in state court, is seeking unspecified damages.
While more than a million alligators live in Florida, fatal attacks are rare — even as human encroachment on their habitat increases.
According to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conversation Commission’s latest statistics, from 1948 to 2022 the state had 453 alligator attacks, 26 of them fatal — about one death every three years. Serge and another woman were killed last year.
A security video obtained by the TV show Inside Edition shows Gloria Serge and Trooper standing about a meter from the water’s edge, unaware the alligator was swimming swiftly toward them before it lunged out of the water. Trooper jumped out of the way, but the alligator grabbed Serge.
Neighbour Carol Thomas told WPEC-TV last year that she heard a commotion and saw the alligator pulling Serge into the water.
“She came up for air, and she pushed her hair back you know, out of her eyes and her arm was out,” Thomas said.
She said she told Serge to swim toward a nearby paddle boat, but “she said, ‘I can’t. The gator has me!’”
Thomas said she ran to get a pole to slap the alligator, but by the time she got back it had taken Serge underwater. “There’s nothing you can do. Just kind of haunted by that . . . I don’t know what else I could’ve done.”
Serge’s body was recovered, and the alligator was trapped and euthanised.