La Verde, a former U.S. Air Force pararescue, said he felt teeth pierce his skull, upper body and face. He heard a popping sound — his jaw snapped.
“It all happened very quickly, but I remember feeling the scales, the tongue and the teeth of this huge animal that looked like a Jurassic beast,” said La Verde, 34.
“I never saw the alligator coming at me,” said La Verde, who used to wear his hair long and was swimming without goggles.In a recent interview with the Times, La Verde said the Aug. 3 attack lasted mere seconds. The alligator was about 12 feet long.“I was able to open her mouth and swim away,” he said. “God gave me the ability.”
“I swam and I didn’t stop until I got to the dock of a house that was across from where the attack happened,” he said. In the emergency room, doctors performed a six-hour craniotomy to remove part of his temporal lobe and jaw surgery to keep it shut. La Verde, whose hair is now shaved, ended up with severe facial nerve damage on his right side and multiple injuries to his back and shoulders.“Sometimes we don’t understand why things happen,” La Verde said. “But I know there is an explanation.”
Even in Florida, alligator attacks are rare. The chance of being seriously injured during an unprovoked alligator incident is roughly one in 3.1 million. At least four people have died in the state from alligator attacks over the last decade, according to the commission.At least 20 alligator bite incidents have been reported to date this year in the state of Florida.
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