Woman, 74, fends off 9-foot-7 alligator

After being dragged into a canal, her quick thinking spared her from serious injury, officials say.

	[Photo by WINK-TV] Trappers on Wednesday night haul away the 9-foot, 7-inch alligator that attacked a 74-year-old Sanibel woman and pulled her into a canal.

Darkness was settling in Wednesday evening, and Jane Keefer was getting in some last-minute gardening. She had her back to the freshwater canal behind her Sanibel home.

In an instant, the 74-year-old woman was grabbed by her left leg and pulled under the water by a 9-foot, 7-inch male alligator.

Keefer, 5-foot-5, instinctively fought back, a move that probably saved her life.

"She struck the alligator several times in the nose, and it let go," said Larry Gregory, an investigator with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. "When she came back up, the gator tried to bite her again on her arm."

At that point, Keefer's husband, William, came running from their house and helped her out of the water.

Keefer was treated at HealthPark Medical Center and released.

"I'm doing fine," she said Thursday from her home. She declined to talk further about the attack. "I don't want to think about it."

The attack happened about 8:15 p.m. By 10:45 p.m., Gregory, two Sanibel police officers, and licensed Fish and Wildlife trappers John French of North Fort Myers and Tracey Hansen of Fort Myers captured the gator by tossing a piece of meat attached to a cord into the canal.

It took all five men to haul the reptile to shore. It will be destroyed, Gregory said.

Experts say alligators that are fed by people are more likely to attack because they lose their fear of humans and associate people with food.

Although there are several signs in the Gulf Shores subdivision where the Keefers live warning residents not to feed alligators, "We believe this one must have been fed," Gregory said. "Even after the attack, it stayed within 25 or 30 feet of the area, and that was with all the people who were at the scene. Normally, they would flee.

"This is one alligator that wasn't the least bit afraid of humans."

Since the state started keeping records in 1948, there have been about 330 reported alligator attacks in Florida, including 13 fatalities. One of the most recent deaths also occurred in Sanibel, which is just west of Fort Myers Beach in Lee County.

On Sept. 11, 2001, Robert Steele, 81, was walking his terrier on a path between two canals when an 11-foot alligator attacked him and severed his leg below the knee. Steele died before he could get to the same hospital where Keefer was treated Wednesday.

And French was one of the trappers who helped capture the alligator.

"Mrs. Keefer is very lucky," Gregory said. "This alligator pulled her completely beneath the water.

"But she fought back and saved her own life."

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