A Florida couple returning home from a romantic date stopped to help what they thought was a hit-and-run victim before discovering he had lost his arm in an alligator attack.
Ismael Rainey, 25, slammed on the brakes when he saw the man motionless on a running trail next to Lake Monroe in Sanford.
He and his partner Kendall Hardester jumped out of their car and ran to help without a second thought.
“It was probably around 1:30 in the morning. We were driving home and we passed a man basically lying on his side here, covered in blood,” Hardester said.
‘He was missing his arm here; ‘You could see the bone on it and all the meat coming out of it.’
“It was horrible,” Kendall Hardester said. “At first I thought he had been hit by a car or something.”
Hardester treated the injured man by pressing a towel tightly over his wound.
Investigators later identified the man as Dustin Crousser, 31, a homeless man who had decided to swim naked late into the night in alligator-infested waters.
“I just ran over,” Hardester said. fox35. “There was a small towel I had, so I took it, covered her arm with it and held it tight until the paramedics arrived.
“I just squeezed his elbow area as hard as I could.”
Other passersby stopped at the scene and called 911 while Hardester treated the seriously injured man.
The images show paramedics taking him on a stretcher to the hospital.
“It was probably five minutes, then another guy came and started helping me,” Hardester said.
The brave young woman said she has no experience in nursing, but her maternal instinct took effect.
‘It was horrible. At first I thought he had been hit by a car or something,” she explained.
‘You’d never think it was an alligator, especially at that time of night.
“It was just a hectic situation, and if it were me, I would want someone to be there to help.”
Rainey said he had never imagined finding himself in a situation like this.
Ismael Rainey said he never imagined he would encounter the situation he found in Lake Monroe
Paramedics took the injured man to hospital in critical but stable condition.
“Yeah, it’s not something you would expect, especially on a normal Saturday night, to end the night by going home,” he added.
“You don’t expect to encounter something like that.”
Crousser was taken to HCA Lake Monroe Hospital in critical but stable condition.
What remained of his arm was later amputated from the elbow down.
Hardester said he would not hesitate to help again in the future.
“If I encountered a situation like that again, yes, I would do it,” he said.