Florida man dies after crashing his car into an 11-foot alligator

[dalton99a]

https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/26/us/alligator-crash-florida-trnd/index.html

Florida man dies after crashing his car into an 11-foot alligator
By Zoe Sottile, CNN
Updated 6:00 AM ET, Sat March 26, 2022

(CNN) A Florida man has died after crashing his car into an 11-foot alligator.

The crash occurred after midnight on Thursday, according to a statement from the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office.

John Hopkins, 59, was driving east on County Road 672 in LIthia, about two miles west of County Road 39, when he struck an 11-foot alligator in the roadway. Lithia is about 25 miles east of Tampa.

Hopkins' car "veered off the road" and turned into a ditch, where a passing driver noticed it and called 911, the sheriff's office said.

Hopkins and the alligator were both deceased when detectives arrived on the scene.

[flying_wahini]

1. How awful. Sad for his family.

Should have just run over it.

[Phoenix61]

2. An 11 foot gator is a 400lb speed bump.

You hit that at any rate of speed there’s no telling where you’ll end up.

[wanda4rafi]

3. My father drove a tractor from Georgia to Florida for 30 years 1950s-80s.

He told how he once ran over an alligator that stretched across the two lane road. After stopping he got out to look for it, but it had crawled away. Pretty tough critters. He also hit a bull one night. The saddest story was hitting a huge draft horse one night. He got out to see how bad it was hurt. He carried a gun in his truck and would have put it out of it's misery if it was still alive. But, there was another just like it that came out of the field and would not let him anywhere near the body. After the police arrived a farmer appeared and told them that the two horses had worked side by side pulling farm equipment for twenty years.

These were rural, two lane highways late at night.