A father heroically swooped in to save his four-year-old daughter by throwing her over a fence just before a nearly 12ft long alligator could lunge at them.
Andrew Grande, 40, was in the backyard of his home in League City, Texas, on July 24 while his daughter, Sarda canal Brandalyn Grande, her older brother, and their babysitter, Robin Randolph, were fishing and catching crabs from a creek behind their home.
While the children were playing, their father noticed an alligator who was bobbing his head above and below the water while swimming suspiciously in their direction.
Gator sightings are not uncommon in that creek, but this one was different. While the animals would normally swim by without incident, this one appeared to set its sights on Brandalyn.
Andrew Grande (right) saved his four-year-old daughter, Brandalyn (left), by sprinting toward her and throwing her over the fence as an 11ft 7in long alligator was closing in on her and was within 10 yards of her near their home in League City, Texas
Brandalyn and her brother were fishing and catching crabs from a creek adjacent to their home on July 24
That’s when Grande noticed an unusually large alligator swimming suspiciously toward his daughter
Grande managed to get his daughter and her babysitter, Robin Randolph (pictured above), to safety
‘He was headed straight for her, there’s no doubt that’s where he was headed,’ the dad told The alligator ‘came straight up to the bulkhead and sunk back down,’ Grande said.
The worried father said that when he looked up the alligator was ‘not ten yards from her.’
That’s when he sprinted toward Brandalyn and Randolph.
‘(The gator) was making a bee-line for us,’ Randolph said.
‘Andrew had knocked me into the gate. Picked up Bambi and threw her over the fence.’
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Grande believed there was a chance that the gator was about to devour his daughter.
‘Whether he was gonna do anything, I don’t know. But I wasn’t going to take that chance,’ Grande said.
Grande then called animal control. The alligator was then removed from the creek
It took several people more than three hours and several pieces of plywood to lift the nearly 600-pound gator from the water
The alligator was taken to Gator County, an outdoor alligator habitat and park, in nearby Beaumont, Texas
After getting his daughter and the babysitter to safety, Grande called animal control.
For about a half hour, the alligator retreated and then circled back toward the home several times.
‘He was just so big that if he had jumped out he would have just broken the fence, he was just that heavy,’ Grande said.
The alligator was a massive one – 11ft 7in and weighing close to 600 pounds.
Cell phone video shows an alligator hunter tied a rope around the gator’s head.
It then took about three hours for animal control to pull the gator out of the water. They needed to use several plywood boards to pull the animal while its mouth was taped shut.
Animal control took the alligator to Gator Country, an outdoor park in nearby Beaumont, Texas.
Grande said he hopes to take the family to visit sometime in the future.
‘Good place, they were happy to have them and we look forward to visiting him one day,’ Grande said.
