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Doctors try to reattach arm after gator attack
The Englewood woman whose arm was bitten off by an 8-foot alligator has surgery at Tampa General Hospital.
©Associated Press
February 25, 2003
ENGLEWOOD -- A 70-year-old woman who lost part of her right arm in an alligator attack was in fair condition Monday, hospital officials said.
An 8-foot, 3-inch alligator latched onto Helena Couto's arm, just above the elbow, as she was trimming brush at the edge of a pond near her home Sunday at Fiddlers Green Condominiums, said Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission Lt. Jeff Hudson.
Hudson did not know how far the pond is from Couto's home in this seaside community near the border of Sarasota and Charlotte counties.
The alligator dragged Couto partly into the pond, but two neighbors were able to pull her away, he said.
"They heard her scream, and that's when they saw the alligator had ahold of her," Hudson said.
Neither of the neighbors, Brian Ganghler and Dorothy Barnes, has a listed telephone number, and neither could be reached for comment Monday.
A Charlotte County sheriff's deputy shot and killed the alligator, said sheriff's spokesman Robert Carpenter.
Carpenter said commission officials retrieved the arm and transported it to Englewood Community Hospital before it was flown to Tampa General Hospital, where Couto awaited surgery.
Hospital spokeswoman Ellen Fiss said Monday she could not discuss whether the reattachment surgery was successful, and Hudson and Carpenter did not know.
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