Horrifying video footage captured the moments after a man had his right-arm bitten off by an alligator when he went outside to relieve himself because the line for the restroom in a Florida bar was too long.
The new clip shows Jordan Rivera, 23, writhing in pain on the muddy banks of a pond outside Banditos in Port Charlotte, just north of Fort Myers, in the early hours of Sunday morning.
The video begins with a group coming upon Rivera who is splashing in the shallows of the water. ‘Get the f*** out the water,’ a voice says. The person recording then says that Rivera was bitten by an alligator. ‘His whole arm came off,’ the narrator says.
Another man begins pulling Rivera by his left arm through the mud as the earlier voice can be heard repeating: ‘Get him the f*** out of the water.’ The group then begins to put a tourniquet on the wound using a belt.
At the point, Rivera begins yelling. One of the group attempts to reassure him by saying: ‘I know it’s going to hurt but I gotta stop the bleeding.’
A fast thinking bar patron attended to Jordan Rivera as he applied a tourniquet while smoking a cigarette
The man tells Rivera that his brachial artery, a major blood vessel supplying blood to numerous parts of the body, has been injured.
Rivera continues to wail in pain, a woman tells him to ‘stay calm’ as another voice says: ‘You’re good brother, you’re good brother.’
Another person off-camera who is dealing with a 911 operator says that a tourniquet has been applied to the wound. The life-saver says: ‘I’ve got a tourniquet on. They need to f***ing get here… they need to get here.’
Others tell Rivera to stay awake while one man calls the victim a ‘soldier.’ The clip ends with Rivera being stretchered away into a waiting ambulance.
On Monday, from his ICU bed, Rivera told NBC2 that he barely remembers the incident.
‘I didn’t lose my life, I lost an arm, it’s not the end of the world. As I was going over there something happened where I either tripped or the ground below me just went down. I ended up in the water. And that’s literally the last thing I remember,’ he said.
His mother Teresa Lessa said: ‘I call them angels, that were there, that saved his life. The chance of someone being there with a tourniquet, to me, it’s a miracle that he’s here.’
‘The first thing I would do is shake the man’s hand,’ Rivera told NBC 2.
Jordan Rivera (pictured), 23, was attacked by a 10-foot alligator in the early hours of Sunday morning
Jordan Rivera’s mother Teresa Lessa sits by his bedside in hospital as he awaits a second procedure on his arm
Rivera said he fell into a pond after using it to go to the bathroom as the queue inside Banditos bar (pictured) was too long
Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission (FWC) said a nuisance alligator trapper removed the 10.5-foot gator (pictured here) from the property. It was then euthanized
Witness Manny Hidalgo, who came to the rescue, said: ‘He was yelling and swimming toward the shoreline.
‘I ran and dragged him up onto the sand. I was scared to get close to the water because it was dark out.
‘I don’t know if it was a mama gator trying to save her young, or a daddy gator trying to feed his family … but the guy was very lucky,’ he told The Daily Sun.
Rivera, from Englewood, was airlifted to Gulf Coast Hospital in Fort Myers, but his arm could not be saved, said Todd Dunn for Charlotte County Fire and EMS.
Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission (FWC) said a nuisance alligator trapper removed the 10.5-foot beast from the property. It was then euthanized.
A GoFundMe page has been set up to help Rivera’s family pay for his medical bills. At the time of writing, the page has raised nearly $50,000.
It was reported that doctors are yet to perform another procedure on Mr Rivera to ensure his arm is free of bacteria passed onto him by the alligator’s teeth.
Last month a 72-year-old man saw his right leg being ripped off below the knee in horrific alligator attack before wildlife officials shot dead two huge predators.
Also in Florida, the unidentified man was working outside his Titusville home one afternoon with his wife and dog when the huge gator emerged from the canal.
Following the attack, one of the beasts had the foot of the injured man still dangling from its mouth.
In February, 85-year-old Gloria Serge tragically died after she was mauled to death by a 10-foot alligator when she tried to rescue her beloved dog, Trooper.
Ms Serge’s dog survived the attacked, but the gator was later captured and euthanized.
She was the third victim to have died by an alligator attack in Florida since July last year.
FWC officials warn of the dangers of these predators as they become more active during spring and summer.
Serge (pictured) was a grandmother living in the Spanish Lakes Fairways retirement community in Fort Pierce, Florida, when she was killed by an alligator
They also warn those who live in Florida to always be mindful when they are near any body of water.
Florida has a population of 1.3 million alligators across its 67 counties, and they can be found in most fresh water bodies and occasionally in salt water.
But the number of cases of people being attacked by alligators in the state is small.
From 1948 to 2021, 442 unprovoked bite incidents have occurred in Florida, 26 of which resulted in human fatalities.
Over the past ten years, Florida has averaged eight unprovoked bites per year that are serious enough to require professional medical treatment, The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission says on its website.
‘The likelihood of a Florida resident being seriously injured during an unprovoked alligator incident in Florida is roughly only one in 3.1million,’ it said.
