ORLANDO SENTINEL (Florida) 27 February 07 Details of gator attack remain fuzzy - Despite victim Adrian Apgar's statements, Fish and Wildlife officials aren't sure what happened Nov. 29. (Amy L. Edwards)
Lakeland: After a long day on the road behind the wheel of a tractor-trailer, Adrian Apgar kicked off his shoes, sat on a rock along the Lake Parker shoreline and enjoyed a cigarette. It was a place he had visited perhaps 100 times before.
But Apgar's plans to kill time before beginning a new work day took a traumatic turn that November morning when he heard a growl, then saw an alligator's mouth rushing toward him.
He tried to get up and run, but he wasn't fast enough. The gator clenched onto his groin area and buttocks, according to details of the attack that were released Monday.
The 12-foot-2, 450-pound reptile, then dragged Apgar into the murky water and grabbed his arms. As the gator rolled, it ripped Apgar's left arm, leaving only a few tendons.
After that, Apgar told a state wildlife investigator, he doesn't remember much else. That is, except it looked to Apgar as though the gator attacking him was teaching other alligators nearby how to hunt.
When deputy sheriffs rescued Apgar about 4 a.m. Nov. 29, he was naked and told them he had been smoking crack cocaine, a statement he later denied.
Apgar's account of the alligator attack was released Monday as part of a 26-page Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission report.
Apgar, 46, remains hospitalized at Lakeland Regional Medical Center. His family has requested that his condition not be released.
According to the Fish and Wildlife report, a hospital doctor told an investigator that Apgar had life-threatening injuries, including severe soft-tissue damage to his left back, buttocks and thigh.
Hospital staff said Apgar's left arm had to be amputated and he is missing "a large portion" of his left buttock.
Despite Apgar's recollection of the attack -- in statements made to Fish and Wildlife officials nearly two months after the incident -- the investigator said he could not conclude exactly what occurred.
One paramedic said Apgar told him he was asleep on the bank when the alligator attacked and pulled him into the water. Another paramedic said Apgar told him he was "chillin' out" and woke up with the alligator dragging him into the water.
The wildlife investigator stated that Apgar adamantly denied smoking crack cocaine, which was reported by sheriff's officials the day of the attack.
A doctor at the hospital said Apgar told him he had been smoking methamphetamines before the attack.
A nurse said Apgar tested positive for marijuana and methamphetamine.
As for his naked rescue, Apgar said he was wearing clothes as he sat on the shoreline of the 2,300-acre lake in east Lakeland.
Although he told an investigator that "he is not totally sure of anything that happened that morning," he thinks he was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and remembers hearing a tearing sound when the alligator first grabbed him.
Apgar said he had taken off his shoes because his feet hurt from driving all day.
One thing is certain: Apgar ended up about 20 feet off the shore in thick vegetation and in the alligator's jaws.
Deputies, listening to Apgar's cries for help, fought their way through chest-deep water and weeds to find him. One deputy grabbed Apgar's arm and then engaged in a brief tug of war with the alligator until the reptile released the man.
It took three deputies and their sergeant about 20 minutes to find and rescue Apgar.
When paramedic Robert Medani placed Apgar on a spine board, the rescuer asked what happened. Apgar responded, "I was chillin' out and I woke up with the gator pulling me into the water," the report said.
Then, Medani told the investigator, Apgar became hysterical and continued to scream, "Get me away from the water."
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/orl-gator2707feb27,0,1635860.story?coll=orl-news-headlines
THE LEDGER (Lakeland, Florida) 27 February 07 Report Recounts Alligator Attack - Adrian Apgar is still in a local hospital three months after losing an arm. (Eva Kis)
Lakeland: Adrian J. Apgar was relaxing at a favorite quiet spot before work when his life changed last November.
The Polk City man told police that he'd come to sit on a rock near the bank of Lake Parker many times before the morning of Nov. 29, when an alligator came out of the shallow water and attacked him.
Nearly three months after the attack, Apgar, 45, remains at Lakeland Regional Medical Center, Gary Morse, a spokesman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, said Monday.
A newly released report by the wildlife commission sheds a few new details on what happened. While it said the alligator was not provoked, it did not conclude what led to the attack.
Trappers captured a 12-foot-2-inch alligator a few hours after the attack at Lake Parker County Park, and Morse said officials were reasonably sure it was the one that bit Apgar.
However, over the next three days, three more alligators were trapped and killed after the wildlife agency received reports that they were being fed. Alligators that are given food by humans overcome their natural fear and learn to associate humans with food.
Necropsies concluded that none of the animals had human remains in their stomachs.
"We weren't necessarily expecting to find something," Morse said. "They don't always swallow what they've got."
The report said Apgar told emergency workers and medical personnel shortly after the attack that he had smoked methamphetamine and fallen asleep before he was attacked.
He later tested positive for methamphetamines and marijuana, the report said.
However, when he was interviewed two months later by wildlife agency investigators, he said he had been sitting near the lake's bank about 4 a.m. smoking a cigarette when he heard a growl and saw an alligator coming toward him, the report stated.
The gator grabbed him below the waist and dragged him into the water. It briefly released him, only to bite onto his right arm. Then, it clamped onto Apgar's left arm and began to roll, which mostly tore the arm off except for a few tendons.
Apgar said he doesn't remember anything that happened after that.
Witnesses who heard his screams called police and three Polk County sheriff's deputies pulled him from the water.
Apgar was taken to LRMC for treatment. His left arm had to be amputated above the elbow, his right forearm was fractured, and several chunks from his side and buttocks were bitten off, along with other puncture wounds and injuries.
Apgar told investigators he was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, but he was naked when he was rescued.
Morse reminded residents that precautions must be taken in areas where alligators may live.
"All I can say is, don't go near heavily vegetated areas at a lake between dusk and dawn - the same thing we've been saying for more than 30 years."
http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070227/NEWS/702270500/1004/NEWS
