A woman was killed by an alligator while walking her dog in Hilton Head, South Carolina Tuesday morning — the second fatal gator attack in the county in less than a year, authorities said.

The 69-year-old was mauled by the beast near a lagoon bordering a golf course in the Spanish Wells community where she lived around 9:30 a.m., the sheriff’s office said.

She was found unresponsive at the edge of the lagoon and first responders weren’t immediately able to reach her after an alligator crawled out of the water and was “guarding the woman,” police said.

The 10-foot, male gator was removed from the area and the woman’s body was eventually recovered.

The Beaufort County coroner identified the victim as Holly Jenkins, WOTC reported. An autopsy is scheduled for Wednesday.

Investigators determined Jenkins was walking her dog when she was attacked. It’s unclear exactly where she was pulled into the water, the sheriff’s office said.

Jenkins’ dog was found and is in good health, the sheriff’s office told The Post.

The South Carolina Department of Natural Resources tweeted Tuesday that its “biologists and officers are responding” to the incident.

Tuesday’s incident was the second fatal alligator attack in Beaufort County in less than a year, according to the sheriff’s office.

In August 2022, an 88-year-old woman was killed by an alligator after she slipped into a pond while gardening in a senior community in nearby Bluffton.

In that attack, the gator also appeared to be “guarding” the woman’s body, which was finally recovered by responders two hours after they arrived at the scene.

In May 2020, a 58-year-old woman was attacked and killed by an alligator in a gated community where she’d gone to do a homeowner’s nails. She was trying to touch the animal when it grabbed her and pulled her into a pond.

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.