Alligator trapper describes close call with 9-foot gator

A bit of chaos ensued outside an elementary school in Wesley Chapel this week when a 9-foot long alligator nearly got loose from the trapper wrangling it.

In the video captured by Carolynn Jones, you can see the trapper sitting on the gator and lifting its snout while several people hold restraints. As the man does so, the gator starts flailing and manages to buck the trapper off its back, getting dangerously close to biting him as it attempts to turn.

Dade City’s Mark Penix is the man in the video, he has been a licensed nuisance alligator trapper since retiring from the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office.

“I had no idea he had come that close until I watched the video in slow motion and said woah that was close,” Penix told 10 Tampa Bay.

On that day, Penix was actually trapping a different gator in a nearby subdivision, when he stepped on a sharp Cypress Tree stump, puncturing his foot.

“Now I'm leaving out of there going to the emergency room to get my foot fixed and as I pull out the subdivision, I see police officers in the middle of the road with this big alligator. I'm like, You got to be kidding me. I said, Well, I gotta catch him,” Penix recalled.

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