May 29 (UPI) -- According to Houston police, officers searching for a missing woman Tuesday found an alligator taking bites out of her remains.
A police sergeant shot and killed the alligator and both it and the woman's remains were recovered from the Horsepen Bayou near the 2700 block of Coastal Oak Drive.
It's not yet clear whether the victim died from the alligator attack or died of other causes beforehand.
The woman, in her 60s, was not publicly identified and an autopsy is being conducted.
A Houston police dive team recovered the body and the alligator.
In 2015 in Texas, a 28-year-old man died after an attack by a large alligator as he swam in Adams Bayou about 30 miles east of Beaumont, Texas. At the time the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department said that was the first alligator attack on record in Texas.
While alligator attacks on humans are rare, they have been known to cause injuries and kill people.
An 85-year-old woman was killed by an alligator as she walked her dog in Florida in Feb. 2023. According to witnesses, the gator lunged from the water and grabbed the woman's dog. She was killed trying to rescue her dog.
Another Florida woman in her eighties was killed by two alligators after she fell into a pond in Englewood Florida in July 2022.
