Orlando Gator Attack

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In the wake of the deaths from the gunning down of Christina Grimmie and 49 people at Pulse, now Orlando, Florida, has been shocked by an alligator attack.

Beyond seemingly any sense of reason, sync or coincidence, this has occurred:

"14 June 2016. A two-year-old boy [on vacation with his family from Nebraska] was dragged into the water by an alligator near a Disney World hotel in Orlando - despite his desperate father's attempts to wrestle his son from the reptile's jaws. The boy was dragged into the Seven Seas Lagoon near the Grand Floridian Resort & Spa around 9.20pm on Tuesday."

A number of people, including a lifeguard, witnessed the horrific gator attack, which took place as hotel guests watched the film Zootopia near the beach. Source.

Zootopia (released March 4, 2016)

The face of the Orange County Sheriff's department, Jerry Demings, so familiar from multiple news conferences on the Pulse attack, was there again, before cameras, to share what he could on the search for the toddler.

The "family was out simply relaxing,” Demings said. “They were wading at the water’s edge when the alligator attacked the child.”

Demings said the toddler’s father struggled with the alligator to try to save his son, “but was not successful.” The mother also went into the water after the boy.

The family alerted a nearby lifeguard that an alligator had attacked the child. The family, who were visiting from Nebraska, were staying at the Grand Floridian, Demings said.

There are "No Swimming" signs at the lagoon and no one else was in the water at the time of the attack besides the child, Demings said.

This body of water is not for recreational swimming "likely for that very reason," the reason being alligators.

"This is Florida and it's not uncommon for alligators to be in bodies of water," he said.

Declan Salcido, who's on vacation with relatives from San Jose, California, was coming back from the animal kingdom when the first ambulance arrived just after 9:15 p.m. ET.

He said there are many "No Swimming" signs near the lagoon visible "from any vantage point."

At a 4:35 pm news conference on June 15, 2016, Sheriff Jerry Demings announced that the toddler 's body was recovered intact and identified as Lane Graves. He and his parents, Matt and Melissa Graves are from Elkhorn, Nebraska.

The name Lane is English and is from a surname meaning "lane, path," which originally belonged to a person who lived near a lane.

The name Graves, like Grimmie, are overtly associated with death, cemeteries, and dark matters.

The surname Graves is an occupational name - from the Middle English greyve and Low German greve meaning "steward" or "person in charge of property." 

"The serfs in the English manors usually elected one of their number annually to oversee their work for the lord."

The earliest origins of the name Graves date back to the Anglo-Saxons, where the baptismal name Reeve is a surname that refers to son of Reeve. The surname Graves also referred to manager or overseer as an occupational surname.

Elkhorn is a neighborhood on the western edge of the city of Omaha, Nebraska, with a  population of 6,062 for the 2000 census. Elkhorn is from the "horn of the elk," or "antler," originating from the names of the local Native American groups there.

In my twilight language book, The Copycat Effect: How the Media and Popular Culture Trigger the Mayhem in Tomorrow's Headlines (NY: Simon and Schuster, 2004), I noted:

The summer of 2001 began quietly enough, with local newspapers in Florida talking about some deathly events, which before it was over, had everyone wondering if every lagoon in the Sunshine State was crawling with human-eating alligators. At first, the stories were only of local interest. On May 4, 2001, an 8-foot alligator in a Venice pond killed Samuel Wetmore, 70, near his home in Sarasota County, Florida. On June 23, 2001, little Alexandria Murphy, 2, wandered from her Winter Haven back yard, then was dragged into Lake Cannon in Polk County, Florida, by a 6 1/2-foot gator and killed.

Then all hell broke loose, with the media engaging in epidemic reporting, taking up the thread of 'gator and crocs as the next big new threat on the horizon. Alligators were popping up everywhere. By the end of that month, I had accounts crossing my desk of out-of-place caimans, alligators, and crocodiles being seen and caught in downstate New Hampshire (a 2.5 ft caiman), Central Park New York City (a 2 ft caiman), and on the same day, June 27, 2001, from Buffalo, New York (a 4 ft alligator caught) and off an island in the middle of the Rhine River, Germany (a 5 ft “crocodile” sighted but not caught).

The alligator attacks concentrated in Florida, however. On Sunday, July 1, 2001, a human arm that “appeared to have been bitten” off by an alligator, was found in a canal west of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The rest of the body could not be found. A sort of high sad comedy was reached when the Florida papers published this kind of remark from a member of the Broward County Sheriff’s Department: “We're sure if they survived and they're missing a right arm, they would have come forward by now. Detectives have no idea what happened with this body part, whether it was some sort of accident and the person was eaten by an alligator and this is what's left.”

During the next week in July, echoes of the Florida ‘gators were heard in the Midwest again. Authorities were reporting the sightings of three alligators near Andrews, Indiana, in the Wabash River close to the Highway 105 bridge. No one was hurt but armed officers were trying to locate the critters.

Back in Florida, Tammy Woehle, 22, was out walking her dog, Lady, before dark, on Big Talbot Island, near Jacksonville, when an 8-foot-long alligator attacked her, according to a report from July 9, 2001. The gator grabbed and ripped part of the muscle out her leg, and pulled her to the ground. The news accounts almost made you feel the gator was a sneaky bastard because it crept up to her as she stood on a sandy beach, away from the water’s edge and away from high grass. She escaped with a six-inch wound on her thigh. Before the attack, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission had held a news conference to calm the public. They had noted that the seven alligator attacks in Florida in 2001 were slightly below average. Talk about bad public relations timing. The media would have nothing to do with it. The Woehle attack was widely reported, and it was clear to the public, from what they were hearing in the press, this was a dangerous summer. Then drumbeats announced that a much more sinister danger was lurking just offshore.

A few pages later, I wrote:

Ellen Steele, 81, heard the screams of her 81-year-old husband Robert on September 11, 2001, and couldn’t do anything to save him. But most people never heard about Robert, and how an 11-foot-long alligator near Sanibel, Florida, fatally attacked him as he walked his dog that day. There was something much larger on the media horizon that day. On September 11, 2001, four jet airliners, with Flight 11 being the first, were involved in the largest single homicidal-suicidal effort in history to bring bloodshed, death, and terror to the core of American society.

Thanks to Enki King, Matthew Deagle, and others for news alerts and info.