Gator-bite victim: 'This won't stop me'

Kasey Edwards' left arm, bitten off between his elbow and his shoulder, was found inside a gator's belly

MELBOURNE - An Okeechobee County man who lost his arm to an alligator Sunday said the quick work by his friends and paramedics saved his life.

"My friends stopped the bleeding," said 18-year-old Kasey Edwards, who tussled with an 11 1/2-foot alligator during an early morning swim in an Okeechobee canal at 2:30 a.m. Sunday. "A friend of mine used his shirt to make a tourniquet. The rest of them made sure I was staying conscious until the helicopter arrived."

Edwards arrived by helicopter at Holmes Regional Medical Center in Melbourne within 90 minutes of the gator bite and immediately went into surgery.

Surgeons opened up the man's wounds a second time Tuesday to check for infections. He expects to stay in the hospital a while longer, he said.

As Edwards recovered from surgery Sunday, hunters from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission captured and killed the gator he had encountered. Edwards' left arm, which had been bitten off between his elbow and his shoulder, was found inside the gator's belly during an necropsy, said Gabriella Ferraro, FWC public information coordinator.

"Most people don't go swimming in those canals," Ferraro said. "Many of the areas have &#39;No Swimming' signs posted."

It's FWC's policy to find and remove gators after they bite people, Ferraro said. The encounters result in gators that are no longer afraid of humans, which makes them dangerous, she said.

"This could have been prevented," Ferraro said. "People growing up in Okeechobee know the lakes and the canals there are the habitat of gators."

According to an Okeechobee County Sheriff's Office report, Edwards had been drinking earlier in the night and some friends tried to persuade him not to swim in the 25-foot-deep canal. Halfway through his swim, an alligator clamped down on his left arm and he grabbed a buoy line and held on to prevent the gator from pulling him underwater.

Edwards, who has lived in Okeechobee since he was 6, said there's an overpopulation of alligators in the area, which makes the waterways less safe than they were when he was younger. He suggested the agency grant more gator hunting permits each year as a solution.

"It's a wake-up call for everyone," Edwards said. "It's also a wake-up call for the FWC. Something needs to be done."

Edwards said he's optimistic about his future despite this setback and others. Last year, he was medically discharged from the Army during boot camp. He was working as a welder before Sunday's gator bite.

"This won't stop me from having a fulfilling life," he said.