Terrifying video captures the moment a 10-foot-long alligator lunges at an 85-year-old woman in Florida — dragging her to her death as she tries to protect her dog from the beast.
The footage obtained by Inside Edition shows Gloria Serge standing with her leashed pooch Monday along a lake outside Spanish Lakes Fairways, a retirement community in Fort Pierce.
The alligator is seen surfacing nearby and approaching the octogenarian, who moves away from the 700-pound monster.
But the vicious reptile is too fast and she only manages to walk a few feet before it scrambles out of the water and tries to attack the dog.
Serge, who desperately tried to protect her pet from its massive jaws, was dragged underwater and killed in the shocking attack.
Neighbor Carol Thomas told Inside Edition that she tried to help Serge while speaking with 911.
“There’s a woman in the lake! The alligator’s got her!” Thomas tells the dispatcher. “I think she’s gone. Oh my God!”
Thomas said she tried unsuccessfully to use a pole to try and pull Serge to safety.
“There is no way I could have gotten to her sooner,” she told the outlet.
“It’s horrible for her family. It’s just horrible, horrible. And her friends, I spoke to a couple of her friends yesterday who are devastated.”
Alligator trapper Robert Lilly, who was called to catch the predator, said that “it was definitely a fight.”
“[We] snagged him on the bottom. He never surfaced. He stayed down the whole time,” Lilly said.
”We were able to get a second hook in him and a hard line in him so we could get him up.”