AR15 Clone Used to Rescue Treed Teen Girl from Big Alligator

Image of 11 foot Alligator from Victoria Advocate, 2009

On Friday afternoon, 29 June, 2018, a 15 year old girl, Jordan Broderick, was floating on a raft in Freek creek in the Ocala National Forest. That section of the creek is in Lake County Florida.

Alligators chased her up a tree. Her mother called 911 and reported that alligators had treed her daughter, and were aggressive. From foxnews.com:

"My daughter's stuck in a frickin' tree and there's gators surrounding her!" Broderick's mother reportedly told a 911 dispatcher. "Oh my God! Please hurry! Please hurry!"

Deputy Mitch Blackmon responded to the scene, where he found the teen — who had been swimming in a creek in Ocala National Forest — yelling that she was tired from hanging onto a tree branch for so long.

Blackmon wrote in his report that his "presence failed to scare the alligator away, and it began encroaching on my area at which time I fired one single 223 round from my Bushmaster AR15 killing the alligator."

The AR15 style rifle was wielded by a competent deputy who went into harms way to rescue the teenage girl.

Many of those who want a disarmed population claim there is no useful purpose for AR15 style rifles. This incident shows that claim is foolish. Modern Sporting Rifles, or Sport Utility Rifles, or the vague, derogatory, and inaccurate term "assault weapons" are all used to describe these versatile semi-automatic rifles.

They are designed to be easy to use, accurate, and adequately powerful, without excessive recoil. They work equally well for deputies, police, or armed citizens. The rifle offers more accuracy, range, and magazine capacity than the commonly available shotgun, with less recoil. From  orlandosentinal.com:

With a single shot from his AR-15 rifle, a Lake County deputy sheriff quickly put an end to a large alligator that had a teenage girl trapped in a tree for nearly an hour, authorities said Monday.

Jordan Broderick, 15, was eventually able to climb safely down from the tree, according to a sheriff’s report.

A shotgun might have worked in this case. But the rifle showed how versatile a tool it is.

The picture shows how big an 11 foot alligator is. One that size is 800 pounds of potent predator. Their diet consists of animals they can catch and kill. To a big alligator, a human is just another meal.

This video shows a large alligator attacking a wild pig. It illustrates the speed and ferocity of an alligator attack.  Warning: extremely graphic.

Link to video

©2018 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.

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