Firefighters were reportedly feeding Alligators near Disney World before two-year-old boy was taken.
People reports firemen were feeding an alligator about mile from the Lagoon where Lane Graves was tragically killed in Orlando last month.
The Orlando Sentinel obtained emails warning staff to stop feeding the alligators.
‘The communicators have found [one alligator] by the station, near the dumpster, and where they park their cars. As you can imagine this is making the communicators nervous because they are fearful of walking to their car and their leg becoming dinner,’ communications captain Claude Rogers wrote in an April email obtained by the newspaper.
‘We have notified Animal Control to remove the alligator. In the interim could you ask your crews to stop feeding the gator.’
Reedy Creek District Administrator John Classe said he believed the firefighter feeding was isolated to the station.
‘You would think that the firefighters would be a little bit more in tune with the trouble that could cause and not do it,’ David Hitzig, executive director of the Busch Wildlife Center, told the Sentinel. ‘You would figure they would have more common sense than that … When you feed an alligator, you’re attracting it to people.’
The alligator dragged the boy into the lake last month, while he was playing on the waters edge of a ‘no swimming’ area. After more than 15 hours of searching, his body was recovered ‘intact’.
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