A 31-year-old Florida woman swimming in a river at Little Big Econ State Forest in Seminole County, Fla., has died after an alligator bit off one of her arms, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC).
During a press conference on Monday, the FWC said the attack took place on Sunday at approximately 1:30 p.m. local time and that it had received a phone call from Seminole County about a swimmer who had been bitten by an alligator.
“At that time, Seminole County, the FWC and the Department of Forestry responded to a 31-year-old female,” said Chad Weber, Public Information Officer for the FWC. “We’re not releasing her name right now because she does have family that’s out of state and, out of respect to her, we rather give notification to the family rather than find out from the news.”
Weber said the woman had been bitten on both of her arms and that her boyfriend was the one who made the phone call to police.
“He was trying to get her from the alligator’s mouth,” Weber revealed. “On the way to the hospital she did pass away from her injuries.”
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The FWC said the woman was from Orlando and was hiking with her boyfriend and best friend when they stopped to swim in the river.
“Right now in our investigation, it doesn’t seem like they were doing anything that was malicious to an alligator. They were in approximately three foot of water,” Weber told the press.
The FWC utilized its air assets and the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office utilized its helicopters to locate the alligator.
“We have harvested two [alligators] that were in the area. One was 12 foot and the other one was 13 foot. Currently, we’re still conducting the investigation and, at this time, we just offer our condolences to this young lady’s family,” Weber added.
The FWC noted that it is the end of alligator mating season and the reptiles become very territorial, but it’s currently hard to “pinpoint what the exact reason was” for the attack.
Weber also noted that because of the statewide drought, water levels are very low.
Seminole County Lt. Grant Eller said that the sheriff’s office has done DNA analysis on the two alligators that were harvested and will be taking that to its Gainesville lab to help determine which one attacked the woman.
“The 13-footer was harvested exactly at the incident scene and the 12-footer was harvested just a short distance from the incident scene,” Eller added.
Based on witness statements, police were in search of a “very large alligator,” Eller explained.
“All freshwater water bodies do contain alligators. Just use caution when swimming in fresh water,” Eller warned the public.
Global News has reached out to the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office for further comment, but has not received a response.
In a recording of the 911 call, released by The Florida Times-Union, screams can be heard in the background as a woman tells the dispatcher, “OK, both her arms, both her arms are off, like, basically.”
“Does she still have her arms attached to her?” the dispatcher asked.
“One of them is, like, very hanging on [by a] thread, and … [the] other was off,” the woman on the phone said.
Alligators rarely bite people for reasons other than food, according to the FWC.
Female alligators may protect their nests by hissing and opening their mouths to frighten intruders but rarely bite people, the FWC notes.
According to the FWC’s statistics on alligator bites on people in Florida, there were 13 bites on people in 2025, with two of those being fatal.
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