Woman killed by alligator in South Carolina

Deputies in South Carolina shot and killed an alligator that fatally attacked a woman on Friday, authorities said. CBS affiliate WCSC-TV reports that the coroner identified the victim as Cynthia Covert, 58, of Johns Island.

The officers were called to a pond on Kiawah Island around 5 p.m. and saw the animal attack, the Charleston County Sheriff’s Office said. Covert was found dead and deputies retrieved the alligator’s carcass to help with the investigation, deputies said on Twitter.

Authorities did not say if they knew what the woman or the alligator were doing before the attack.

This is at least the third fatal alligator attack in South Carolina in the past four years.  Last year a man was found dead on Kiawah Island with what authorities believed to be alligator bite marks but it was unclear how the man initially died.

A 90-year-old woman walked out of a Charleston nursing home in 2016 and was killed, while a 45-year-old woman walking her dog was fatally attacked on Hilton Head Island in August 2018.

Before those attacks, South Carolina had never recorded a person killed by an alligator.