By Jason Dill
The Bradenton Herald
BRADENTON, Fla. — An alligator interrupted a pizza delivery on Sunday.
The 8-foot gator wandered through River Isles , a senior living community in Bradenton. It took refuge under a car parked in the driveway of a house waiting on the pizza delivery.
The Bradenton Police Department posted officer Michael Tolson’s body camera video of the encounter on social media. In the video, the gator walks along a cul-de-sac before resting under a white van. A Rico’s Pizzeria delivery driver arrives and Tolson urges the driver to stop and suggests going around the back of the house to deliver the pizza.
“I’m a little scared,” the pizza delivery driver said in the video.
She then asked Tolson if he could drop the pizza off, while a neighbor warned the pizza recipient on the phone of the gator.
As Tolson walks through the grass around the driveway with the resting gator, a woman walks out the front door a few feet from the gator.
“Ma’am, get back,” Tolson said on the video. “Over there is an alligator right under your car.”
The woman, who appears to be talking on her phone, said, “Oh my god. Oh my heaven, there’s a big alligator under my car!”
Tolson continued to urge the woman to get back in her house.
“Where’s my pizza,” she asked in the video.
The video then cuts to Tolson meeting the woman at her back door where she asked how much it was.
“I have no idea, I’m not the pizza man,” Tolson said in the video.
The woman then realized Tolson is a police officer and she later said she’d like a picture of the gator. So Tolson used her phone to take a photo of the gator before trappers arrived to take the gator out of the neighborhood.
A BPD spokesperson said trappers safely relocated the gator in eastern Manatee County.
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