The body believed to be a missing Texas woman was found Tuesday morning — inside the jaws of an alligator, police said.
Houston police were searching an area near the Horsepen Bayou in Clear Lake for a woman who was reported missing when they came across the grisly scene at around 8:40 a.m.
One of the officers shot and killed the gator as it chowed on the woman’s body to stop it from further damaging her remains, the department said.
Houston police divers were called to the scene and removed the remains — of the woman believed to be in her 60s — as well as the reptile from the bayou.
An autopsy will determine the identity of the deceased as well as the cause of death, police said.
It’s unclear if the gator killed the woman or if it was scavenging her remains after she was already dead.
A medical examiner will work to determine this during the autopsy.
The Houston homicide division is investigating the woman’s death.
The last fatal alligator attack in the Lone Star State was in 2015 when a 28-year-old man was attacked and killed while swimming. Before his death, there hadn’t been a fatal gator attack in over 90 years, according to ABC 13.
A similar tragedy occurred in Florida last September when a 14-foot gator was spotted walking along a residential street with a body inside its jaws.
Officers pulled the beast out of a canal it had gone into — still with the body clenched in its teeth — and shot it several times.
The remains were later identified as a 41-year-old Florida mother named Sabrina Peckham who was homeless at the time of her death and living in a wooded area near the swampy canal.
A medical examiner later determined that Peckham was killed, and partially eaten, by the gator.
