‘He growled at me’: Florida man acting ‘bizarre’ bitten by alligator, shot dead by deputies after he attacked them with garden shears, tried to grab shotgun, sheriff says

Inset: Timothy Schulz (Polk County Sheriff’s Office). Background: RaceTrac gas station in Polk County, Florida (WTVT/YouTube).

Florida deputies shot and killed a man who they say attacked them with garden shears and broke into a patrol vehicle where he tried to swipe a shotgun — all after an alligator bit him when he went for a dip in a lake.

The incident unfolded around 6 a.m. at a RaceTrac gas station on State Road 37 in Polk County, Sheriff Grady Judd said in a press conference. A gas station clerk called deputies that a “bizarre” man was at the gas station asking to call his son. Deputies arrived but couldn’t find him. Then nearly two hours later, deputies received a call about a man swimming in an alligator-infested lake.

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One person tried to throw the man a life preserver but he refused to take it.

“Another witness tried to talk to him and he said ‘he growled at me so I ran in the house and locked the door,”” Judd said.

Deputies arrived to find the man walking out of the lake with an apparent alligator bite on his arm. Then he tried to break into a car with a brick before he attacked deputies with garden shears, according to Judd.

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The sheriff said his deputies tried to de-escalate the situation and used their Tasers. But that didn’t work. He then allegedly tried entering the passenger door of the deputy patrol vehicle and steal a shotgun.

“At that moment in time all the warnings had to stop and the action had to begin,” Judd. “That’s when they shot him enough to stop the threat.”