Normally, when a burglar breaks into a property, the unsuspecting owners or residents are the ones in danger of being harmed. However, sometimes those residents choose to fight back.
Recently, a Florida man decided to break into a property just days after getting out of jail. What he didn’t realize, however, was that the creatures living at the property are one of the most dangerous predators in the world.
The 911 Call
On the morning of November 6, 2018, a resident of the Lighthouse Park neighborhood of St. Augustine, Florida, called 911. According to the resident, at around seven in the morning, they noticed a half-dressed man crawling in the yard of their home. “We’re normally up pretty early,” Jeff Black told First Coast News about the Tuesday morning his wife spotted the man.
An Unusual Sight
“She says, ‘there’s a guy crawling next door in his boxers in the mud.’ Next thing I know, he jumps into our courtyard,” Black explained. At that point, Black’s wife decided to call 911. “There’s a man with only gym shorts crawling,” Black’s wife told the 911 dispatcher.
A Possible Burglar
“He’s just crawling with his shorts halfway down his [butt] and no other clothes. He was doing a slow, creeping crawl like he didn’t want to be seen,” she added. “The doors are locked and your dogs are inside?” the dispatcher asked the caller. “Yes, ma’am. But now he’s crawling back over the wall into our neighbor’s yard,” Black’s wife said during the 911 call.
The Police Arrive
The dispatcher sent officers from the St. Augustine Police Department that were on patrol over to the neighborhood. When they arrived, they saw the young man crawling and walking around just as the caller had described. At first, residents believed the man had been crawling around to avoid detection.
The Bite Marks
But as the residents watched him crawl out of a bush he had been hiding in when police arrived, they realized he was likely crawling because his foot was injured. According to Black, it appeared the man’s foot had been bitten. “He definitely had three good bites,” Black said.
An Outrageous Claim
“You could actually see the teeth marks. They were on the top of his foot,” Black added. However, what the young man told the responding officers made everyone think he was either delusional or high on drugs. “He kept saying, ‘I was held hostage in a pool with gators.’”
Held Hostage
“He says, ‘Yeah, I got bit by alligators.’ Everybody’s looking at him like, ‘OK, he’s got to be on something.’ He was wired. Clearly running on adrenaline or something,” Black added about the unusual story. According to the police, the young man told them that he had been taken by an old man and held hostage.
An Unlikely Story
The arrest report noted that the man told them that the “old man had the alligator on a leash and he was surrounded by all these baby alligators in the old man’s garage.” The man continued and explained that the old man was feeding him to the alligators and had forced him to drink a “black concoction.”
Medical Attention
While the officers didn’t know what to think about the man’s story, they could see his foot had been bitten by something and had him taken to Flagler Hospital for treatment. While the young man, who police identified as Brandon Keith Hatfield, was on his way to the hospital, the police received another unusual call.
Another 911 Call
This time, the caller was the St. Augustine Alligator Farm. They reported that the alligator farm, which was a little less than a mile away from the neighborhood where Hatfield had been found, had been broken into. According to staff members at the alligator farm, they believed someone had played a prank on them.
The Damage
The caller explained to police that they thought someone had vandalized the park because of the state of the property when they opened the farm that morning. As they were preparing for opening, the staff discovered several lamps and signs had been broken.
A Dangerous Prank
According to park director John Brueggen, they found a statue on a tiny island in the middle of the crocodile pit had been knocked over. What concerned them the most was that the statue can only be reached by swimming in the crocodile-infested water.
The Floating Croc
The reason they first believed the damage was a prank from vandals was that staff members also found a pair of shorts and a single Crocs shoe floating in the crocodile pit. But the staff quickly realized the damage wasn’t part of a prank after finding a lot of blood on the zip line platform that overlooks the crocodiles.
Connecting The Dots
During the 911 call, staff at the alligator park told them about what they had discovered that morning in the park’s crocodile pit. “Oh, I think we’ve already got the perpetrator in custody. We got somebody who told us they were bitten by an alligator,” an officer said in response.
The Surveillance Footage
The staff then played footage from their surveillance cameras from the previous night to see what had really happened. In the footage, a man can be seen jumping into the pit of the Nile crocodile enclosure from a roof that was 20 feet high. The man can then be seen swimming on the pond, which had three deadly crocodiles ranging from 9 to 12 feet long.
Four Hours With The Crocs
The surveillance footage shows the man, who police believe was 23-year-old Brandon Hatfield, stayed in the park for about four hours. During that time, he caused more than $5,000 in damage to the property. He also spent that time swimming in the pond and sitting on the edge of the water.
A Brush With Death
At one point, the footage shows a 12-foot crocodile lunge at Hatfield and bite down on his leg and foot. Hatfield managed to fight the crocodile off and escape with his foot still intact. When police asked Harfield about what happened the night before, however, he seemed to have no idea that he had almost been killed. “Oh no sir, I wasn’t,” Hatfield told the police when asked if he had been at the alligator farm.
The Charges
Police charged Hatfield with Burglary and Criminal Mischief for the incident. They also charged him with violation of probation after discovering he had been arrested for being caught with methamphetamine and stealing a car and had been released from jail just three days before breaking into the park.
Concerning Behavior
“I’m concerned about him. I don’t know if it was a suicide attempt or if he was on so many drugs he didn’t know what he was doing,” Brueggen told First Coast News. “I think it’s sad to see anyone going through what he was going through,” Black added. “Whether drug induced or not. He was clearly out of sorts. He was lucky to be alive.” Police said that they tested Hatfield but the results of his toxicology report have not been made public.
A Lucky Escape
According to Brueggen, Hatfield is likely only alive because the crocodiles, which easily could have killed him, were in shock. “I think really the saving grace for him is just a total shock on the crocodile’s part. It was totally shocking that it was such a prey item,” Brueggen told Action News Jax. “They are a very aggressive type of crocodiles,” according to Gil Costillo, who has worked with the animals for 40 years. “They contribute to a lot of deaths. The fact that the guy is still alive, he’s very, very lucky.”
