A Florida man died while searching for frisbees in a gator-infested lake. Here's why people risk life and limb looking for the discs.
A Florida man looking for frisbees in a lake was killed in a suspected alligator attack, police say.
The body was found with its arm torn off near the lake, which is located next to a disc golf course.
It's not the first time someone searching for discs was attacked by an alligator in the same lake.
A man looking for frisbees in a Florida lake was found dead on Tuesday with his arm torn off in an incident that investigators believe was a possible alligator attack, police said.
The identity of the 47-year-old man has not been released, the Largo police department and Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said in a statement, per NBC News. The outlet reported that his body was found at Taylor lake in John S. Taylor Park.
"At this time, detectives believe the victim was looking for frisbees in the water and a gator was involved," Largo police said, according to the outlet. "There are posted signs of no swimming in the lake."
According to several reports, the man had been searching for the frisbees to sell them.
Paul Cozzie, the director of parks and conservation resources in Pinellas County, told The New York Times that the man was a "transient" who made a living selling the sporting items to people playing on a disc golf course near the lake.
Cozzie told The Times that local disc golfers prefer to use special, more expensive frisbees — not the kind one would typically buy in a supermarket.
The lake, which people aren't allowed to swim in, could be up to eight feet deep, so one would have to "kick around on the bottom" to find any errant frisbees, Cozzie said, per the outlet.
He added that park rangers had caught the man trying to enter the lake in April and warned that he would be banned from the park if he attempted to do so again.
Ken Hostick, 56, who regularly plays disc golf near Taylor Lake, told the Tampa Bay Times that he knows of people who try to gather lost frisbees at the lake.
"These are people that are down on their luck," he told the outlet. "Sometimes they dive in the lakes, they'll pull out 40 discs. You may sell them for five bucks a piece, and you may sell them for 10 bucks a piece, depending on the quality."
Tuesday's incident wasn't the first time an alligator attacked someone searching for frisbees at the same lake.
In June 2020, a man was bitten in the face by one while looking for frisbees but managed to pry himself free and get medical help, The Tampa Bay Times reported. Per the outlet, he had been wading in Taylor Lake at around 5 a.m..
Both attacks happened during the alligator mating season, which typically spans from May to June. If the recent incident is proven to be alligator-related, it would mark Florida's first fatal alligator attack since 2019, per the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
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