TIMES-PICAYUNE (New Orleans, Louisiana) 30 July 05 Venice girl, 12, bitten by gator - Child attacked in pond; mother says nephew beat reptile back (Sandra Barbier)
A 12-year-old Venice girl was bitten this week by an alligator in a pond near her home in a marshy area outside the Plaquemines Parish hurricane protection levee.
Ashley Brown lost the tip of one middle finger and was bitten on one thigh when a 7- or 8-foot alligator grabbed her Monday, said Aline Perez, the girl's grandmother.
She underwent surgery at West Jefferson Medical Center in Marrero and was recuperating Friday, Perez said.
"She's up and walking around. She has a lot of pain with her hand," Perez said.
Doctors had to attach a skin graft from the side of her hand to the injured finger, Ashley's mother, Loretta Brown, said from her daughter's hospital room.
Plaquemines Parish Sheriff's Office spokesman Col. Charles Guey said he had little information on the attack, although the office had gotten a report that the emergency medical service had been summoned to a home.
Ashley and her family live on Marsh Drive, a short gravel road where the residents are extended family members, Brown said.
The girl was playing with her cousins in a forbidden pond behind her uncle's house, Brown said. The grown-ups fish in the pond, she said, but "it was restricted by the parents. They snuck off."
The pond, where the children were swimming, is about 4 feet deep, Perez said. She said her daughter was attacked by the alligator from under the surface of the water. She thought it was one of her cousins playing.
"She felt like a grip on top of her leg. She tried to get it off with her hands." When she got out of the water, the alligator still had hold of her, Brown said. "One of my nephews hit it with a 2-by-4 to get it away," she said.
The alligator caught Ashley's hand when she tried to push herself up and thrust the animal away, she said.
Perez said the children ran into her house. "There was so much confusion," she said.
"They were all screaming. Finally, my little granddaughter held up her hand and said, 'Look, Maw Maw, an alligator bit my finger off.' "
"I took her and brought her in the kitchen. She was full of mud," Perez said. She washed the wounds and wrapped her hand in a towel while an ambulance was called.
Perez said the attack occurred about 6:30 p.m. Later that day, she said, her son and several others found and shot the alligator. According to Perez, wildlife agents, either with the state or the parish, arrived and said they had counted several more live alligators at the pond.
Brown said the attack has frightened all the families in the small area. "There's always children running around . . . She's lucky to be alive," Brown said of her daughter.
Perez said the girl weighs 84 pounds, and Brown said her nephew, 13-year-old Michael Bourgeois, saved Ashley's life.
Alligators have become more of a nuisance in recent years, climbing onto porches and into back yards, Brown said.
The pond surrounds a private landfill, Tidewater Landfill, beside Coast Guard Road. Brown said she does not know if it was dug as part of the landfill or for another commercial operation.
The area is primarily a site for marine-based industries.
But Brown said she is certain there should be a fence around the pond and landfill site.
"They need a fence," she said. "They should have an 8-foot fence around there, knowing the dangers of the wildlife," she said.
Venice girl, 12, bitten by gator