An alligator bit off a Polk County man’s forearm Wednesday night during a psychological episode in which he jumped into a lake to avoid being taken into custody.
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Jessie Kingsinger, 21, was missing three-quarters of his left arm when he crawled out of the lake in a wooded area behind an apartment complex, said Sergeant Gary Gross, a spokesman for the Lakeland Police Department. Using witness reports to track his location as he ran, officers eventually located him from the sky lying on the ground by a nearby lake. The lake he swam across had a sign on its banks saying alligators frequent the area.
“He covered the bone with it, and I applied pressure”, Mike Taylor, Kingsinger’s brother-in-law, told WTSP.
There are no criminal charges pending against Kingsinger.
On Thursday, Taylor pointed to an area where he found Kinsinger screaming in pain on the bank of the lake.
“He said my hand hurts and I go “Jessie, you don’t have a hand”, said Taylor. The newspaper also reported that Kinsinger took psychiatric medication. She said the gator did so much damage during the death roll to her son’s arm that it’ll have to be amputated further. “This is the first surgery“, she said.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission was notified and officers will follow-up on the alligator bite incident.
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Kingsinger was placed under the Baker Act due to his condition, police said. In 2012, Kinsinger was shot twice trying to protect his mom from a home invasion.
