A lot of people are concerned about alligators, but just how bad is the threat? Are you more likely to get struck by lightning or hit by a car?

An 88-year-old woman in South Carolina most likely wasn’t pondering the question when she supposedly slipped into a pond while she was gardening and got killed by an alligator. 

Nancy Becker lived in a senior living community and was apparently gardening outside her apartment at around 11 a.m.

Her body was discovered by another senior living at the community. 

It took first responders a while to recover the body, because the alligator, a male about 9’8” long, had remained by the women and needed to be captured. 

Officials from the Department of Natural Resources were able to secure the alligator and euthanized it.

“When we responded, that’s what we observed — that the alligator was basically holding her hostage, I guess,” Major Angela Viens, of the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office, told reporters at WJCL.

Alligator attacks are rare, but reportedly, this was the fifth alligator death on record in South Carolina since 2000, but it’s the second this year. In June, an alligator dragged a man into a pond. 

There was a report of an incident in another community, in May 2020, where a woman was killed by an alligator. 

There was also a killing in Charleston in 2016, and another on Hilton Head Island in 2018. 

Anyone who has elderly parents living in Florida, has heard stories about alligators on the lawns outside their lanais or seen in the ponds that face the backyards of many senior living communities.