Two men from Lake Wales, Florida were arrested last Saturday for allegedly killing a 9-and-a-half-foot alligator at the Eagle Ridge Mall.
Deputies allege that 41-year-old Rodney Michael and 28-year-old Dustin Moore used a fishing pole with chicken to lure the reptile out of a retention pond at the mall at around 3:45 p.m.. The two men are then said to have shot and killed the alligator with a rifle – which is around the time that the mall security guard came along.
They fled the scene but were tracked down by a Polk County detective. The pair allegedly confessed and suggested that they killed the animal to make money. They have since been charged with unlawful killing of an alligator.
Seriously though, I want to know how they thought that they would be able to get away with going onto a shopping mall’s property with a rifle to shoot an almost 10-foot-long alligator in the middle of the day – and how they thought they were going to carry it out. I’m no herpetologist but one would think that a nine-and-a-half-foot alligator would be rather heavy.
[Source]
