A Florida woman died Tuesday afternoon when an alligator flipped her canoe and attacked her in Lake Kissimmee, which is south of Orlando and East of Tampa.
Cynthia Diekema, 61, sat at the bow of the 14-foot canoe as she and her husband paddled the shallow depths near the mouth of Tiger Creek, according to The Lakeland Ledger.
The couple passed over an alligator in 2.5 feet of water, and the reptile began thrashing and flipped the couple’s boat over.
“She ended up on top of the alligator in the water and was bitten,” Maj. Evan Laskowski of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said at a news conference Wednesday.
“Her husband attempted to intervene, but was unsuccessful,” Laskowski said.
A sheriff’s office helicopter crew later spotted Diekema’s body floating in the water.
Bradley Johnson, the public information officer for FWC Division of Law Enforcement, said such alligator attacks are rare.
“This is not believed to be a predatory incident but simply a defensive incident, where they came upon the alligator beneath the water’s edge, and when the canoe struck it, it caused a reaction,” Laskowski said at the news conference.
That night,…
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