Dead 6ft Alligator Found Lying in Road With Gunshot Wound to the Head

Georgia residents made an unusual discovery after finding a 6-foot-long alligator lying on the side of the road in Coffee County, near Douglas. On closer inspection, the deceased gator showed signs of a vehicle strike and a fresh gunshot wound on the side of its head.

Officials from Georgia's Department of Natural Resources were called to the scene on Hebron Church Road just after noon on March 23.

"Based off of the timeline of the calls that we received on it, it appears it was hit by a vehicle and then after that another passing motorists dispatched it and killed it out of mercy," Game Warden Luke Rabun told Newsweek.

Senior Wildlife Biologist Greg Nelms said that initial reports suggested that the alligator was alive but having difficulty moving, but by the time staff arrived at the site the alligator was dead.

"Alligators are very resilient and can live for hours with very serious wounds," Nelms told Newsweek. "It's possible someone in this area passed it multiple times that day and decided to end its suffering."

American alligators can be found along the east coast of America, from as far north as North Carolina to as far west as the Texas Gulf Coast, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. They are mostly found in marshes, swamps and rivers.

Nelms said that alligators were very common in this particular part of Coffee County. "This area of the county has a lot of farm ponds and alligators often leave the natural wetlands and streams to make use of ponds," he said. "This movement will sometimes require them to cross dirt and even paved roads."

As a result, alligators do sometimes get run over. "It was lying in a spot just over the crest of a hill and would have been impossible to see if it happened to be in the road at the wrong time," Nelms said.

Usually in roadkill incidents like these, the animal is too far gone to be used as food or other purposes. But, in this case, the alligator had only been dead for a short period of time. "The alligator was still fresh enough to be donated, and it was donated to a family in the community," Rabun said.

Nelms said that, based on current information, further investigation was not warranted. As Rabun said, this was just another case of roadkill, made interesting by someone who had chosen to put the gator out of its misery.