Missing Child Prompts Alligator Hunt

[SteveGrenard]

OCALA NATIONAL FOREST -- An alligator trapper will aid the hunt for missing 2-year-old Trenton Duckett tonight.

The trapper will try to catch alligators large enough to eat a toddler, then cut them open looking for a sign of the toddler.

"This is just a process of elimination," state wildlife official Joy Hill said.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news...sep18,0,7743764.story?coll=orl-home-headlines


according to an e-mail from someone down in Florida:

Channel 9 out of Orlando Florida has announced the plans by the Orange County Sheriffs Department to kill every gator over 8 feet in a lake in the Ocala National Forest in an attempt to find any remains of the young boy…”

More on missing boy with additional links to earlier stories. He has been missing three weeks.

http://www.local6.com/news/9876601/detail.html

 

[Darth Rotor]

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news...sep18,0,7743764.story?coll=orl-home-headlines
according to an e-mail from someone down in Florida:

I think this wife just wants a new pair of shoes, and this is his excuse to hunt alligators.

Two year old = hors d' ouvre for a gator, eh?

DR

 

[Cylinder]

I think this wife just wants a new pair of shoes, and this is his excuse to hunt alligators.

Actually, wild skins are allowed to be harvested for gators killed under license. Most alligator skins harvested are captive bred with suppliers having to supply a significant portion of the brood to managed release projects. Alligator conservation is becoming a success story especially in Florida. The real problem is not population density but loss of habitat.

 

[SteveGrenard]

I have been reading the back press on this child's dissapearance. It appears that the child's mother was found dead on September 8th:

LEESBURG, Fla. -- The body of a woman whose 2-year-old son has been missing for nearly two weeks was found Friday in her grandparents' home in The Villages, according to police.

Leesburg authorities said Melinda Duckett's body was found at a home at 638 Rainbow Lane in the Villages of Lady Lake. Police said the house belonged to the woman's grandparents.

Circumstances surrounding the death of Duckett, 21, were not immediately released. However, police said she did not die from natural causes.