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Deputies Protect Man From Gators For Second Time

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By Billy Townsend

The Tampa Tribune

Published: March 7, 2008

LAKELAND For the second time in just more than a year, Polk County sheriff's deputies have intervened to protect Adrian Apgar from an alligator, the sheriff's office reported.

In November 2006, a quartet of deputies waded into Lake Parker to rescue Apgar from the clutches of a large alligator that nearly killed him.

Just after midnight this morning, deputies were able to talk Apgar, 47, out of a pond at Saddle Creek park before a gator could grab him.

Other than that, the incidents, as described by the sheriff's office, sound strikingly familiar.
This is the sheriff's office account of today's encounter:

Deputies found an unoccupied truck parked at a dirt cul-de-sac near one of the former phosphate ponds that make up the park and began to investigate. They learned it was Apgar's truck and began looking for him.

The deputies called for Apgar, and he eventually answered from the far end of trail cut into thick brush and brambles. Squatting and dodging woody plants, the deputies tracked Apgar through the brush to the edge of a pond.

There found him naked and wet, walking through the water. Several alligators were nearby.

Apgar also had been found naked in the 2006 incident. This time, deputies were able to talk Apgar safely out of the water.

Apgar told deputies he had been bitten by a snake while looking for an alligator, but they found no evidence of that. Judd said Apgar was behaving delusionally.

He was detained under the Baker Act, which allows police to hospitalize a person whose mental condition is considered a threat to themselves or others for 72 hours. He was taken to Lakeland Regional Medical Center.

The first alligator encounter cost Apgar his arm and kept him hospitalized for weeks. The deputies who rescued him found themselves celebrities for a day or two. The incident spawned a number jokes on Web sites and other media sources.

Polk Sheriff Grady Judd said today that the first incident was "hilarious," but that this newest confrontation had angered him and his deputies because it put them at risk again, unnecessarily.

Asked what was hilarious about the first attack, Judd said he meant that some people in the community had found it hilarious, but that his agency never did.

Judd said Apgar will likely face misdemeanor charges of trespassing and exposing himself. Judd said he's helpful that the legal system will be able to impose monitoring and help on Apgar, who toxicology reports showed had methamphetamine in his system at the time of the first incident.

Judd said deputies found no evidence of drug use this time, other than Apgar's bizarre behavior.

"He told the deputies he knew he was gambling with his life. Our deputies have been placed in danger twice as a result of this man's actions," Sheriff Grady Judd said.

"I applaud our deputy's actions they followed up on an abandoned truck, realized who it belonged to and found Apgar, who was placing himself in danger, again," Judd said.

Reporter Billy Townsend can be reached at (863) 284-1409 or wtownsend@tampatrib.com

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