A man has died after being attacked by a crocodile and dragged into a retention dam, authorities said.
The massive creature grabbed the victim near the edge of the dam just before noon Friday at the Myrtle Beach Golf and Yacht Club in South Carolina.
After attacking the man, the crocodile crawled back into the pond, the Horry County Police Department said in a statement.
Police officers received a call about a water rescue mission and responded to the dam around 11:45 p.m. There, rescue workers “determined that a crocodile grabbed a neighbor who was near the edge of a retention pond and withdrew,” police said.
A biologist from the state’s department of natural resources and an alligator removal contractor decided that the animal ‘should be killed human on the site’, police added in their statement.
The victim, who was not identified by authorities, was retrieved from the dam. The Horry County Coroner’s Office is investigating the death.
The attack was the first deadly alligator attack in the state since May 2020, authorities said.
Although it is the first deadly alligator attack in the state since May 2020, it is the second fatal attack in a month. On May 31, a man was killed by a crocodile while collecting frisbees from a lake in Largo, Florida.
The body of Sean McGuinness, 47, was retrieved from the lake, where he regularly searched for discarded objects from a nearby disc golf course.
McGuinness’ body was found with three limbs, Largo police said. The final medical examiner’s report on his death is expected at the end of July.
Two large alligators were killed in the lake after his death.
Fatal alligator attacks are generally rare in the US, where on average only about 10 people a year were killed by the animal between 1999 and 2019, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
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