SUNRISE, Fla. – Trappers using pig lungs as bait scoured canals and other areas Friday as they tried to find an alligator believed to have killed a woman.
Yovy Suarez Jimenez's dismembered body was found in a canal Wednesday by construction workers. The 28-year-old Davie resident had left for a jog Tuesday night and did not return.
Dr. Joshua Perper, Broward County's medical examiner, concluded Thursday that "the alligator attacked the woman while she was on land" and then dragged her body into a canal.
He added that she "died of traumatic injuries sustained by an alligator attack, a mixture of blood loss and shock, and in my opinion died very fast."
Suarez's mother told WFOR-TV she last spoke to her daughter by phone Tuesday night when she was sitting under a bridge by a canal.
Witnesses saw a woman matching Suarez's description dangling her feet over the water's edge, but no one saw an attack, said Officer Jorge Pino, a spokesman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
Authorities killed an alligator caught Thursday night but determined it did not kill Jimenez. Its stomach contained only tennis balls and a football, said Dani Moschella, a commission spokeswoman.
There have been 25 fatal alligator attacks in Florida since 1948, according to the wildlife commission.
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