These events happened in July, 2012, but this story of survival is so incredible it’s worth telling again.
Kaleb “Fred” Langdale and his friends spend most of the hottest summer days swimming across the Caloosahatchee River near Fort Myers, Florida. The teenage boys often raced to see who could reach the opposite bank and return to the dock first. On July 11, 2012 Fred was in the lead.
The 17-year-old was the first to reach the bank around 2:00 PM, but he was falling behind on the return trip. Abraham Cisneros was the first to see a 10 foot long alligator. He and three other boys watched from the dock as the gator closed on Fred.
“It came as fast as it could out of the bushes,” 14-year-old Gary Beck told the Palm Beach Post, “and it was coming straight for Fred.”
Fred turned at the sound of his friends’ screams and tried to hide beneath the water. “He kept coming straight at me,” Fred explained. Knowing he couldn’t escape, Fred attempted to bring the fight to the giant reptile. Using a trick he had seen on the television series Swamp People, Fred tried to strike the soft patch of flesh below the gator’s jaw. It didn’t work.
In an effort escape, Fred tried to push the gator away with his feet, but it grabbed his arm just below the elbow in the process. The alligator started a “death roll,” a lateral roll maneuver intended to injure and incapacitate prey. Fred said he could feel his flesh tear and the bones of his arm splinter as he was thrown around the gator.
Fred knew what came next, and his chance for survival was slim. “If I could break my arm off I had a chance,” he said from his hospital bed. “If I couldn’t break my arm off, I was dead.”
Fighting for his life, Fred tore the stump of his arm away and swam back to the opposite side of the river. He started yelling to his friends on the dock to call for help. “Call an ambulance, my arm’s gone,” 16-year-old Matt Baker heard him say. “He wasn’t crying,” Baker said. “He was mainly in shock. I just saw him holding his arm, what was left of it.”
Paramedics had already arrived by the time the other boys were able to drive across the river. Fred had wrapped his stump with whatever he could find to stop the bleeding. He was flown to Lee Memorial Hospital in Fort Myers.
Authorities from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission found and killed the alligator about 4 hours later. They retrieved Fred’s arm from the animal’s stomach, but it was too badly damaged to be re-attached. Spokesman Jorge Pino explained that this encounter is highly unusual. “Millions of people swim in Florida lakes and canals during the summer months,” he said, “(without) human-alligator encounters.”
In September, 2012 Fred was fitted with a myo-electric prosthetic limb with camo-pattern skin. Dan Strzempka, a prosthetist at Florida’s Hanger Clinic was impressed by how quickly Fred learned to use his new limb. ‘I’ve literally been doing this 27 years and I’ve never seen anyone do this as fast,’ he told ABC.
“I’m just happy I’m still alive, my buddies are still alive. I couldn’t care less about my arm,” Fred explained.
His younger friends are equally grateful. “If the alligator hadn’t gone after him, me and Abraham would’ve been dead,” Baker said. “We wouldn’t have known what to do.”
Hear more about Fred’s incredible fight to survive in the full news report below.