Police thought a car went into a Hilton Head pond. Their answer involved an alligator
Officials used a thermal camera and sent a dive team into a Hilton Head Island pond thinking a vehicle had rolled into the water — but they later concluded an alligator had caused the misunderstanding, police said.
A deputy on patrol in the area of Arrow Road and Palmetto Business Park Road, located near U.S. Highway 278 on south-end Hilton Head, noticed “multiple large items of debris” near the embankment of a nearby pond in the early morning hours of June 9, according to a Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office incident report.
The assorted debris included apparent broken pieces of a vehicle’s undercarriage or rain guard and a North Face backpack that was “fully saturated and coated with pond muck,” the deputy wrote in the report, adding that shrubbery near the pond had damage consistent with being struck by a vehicle.
After the deputy called additional units for backup, police observed a “fresh wet trail leading from the pond to the roadway,” the incident report says, and authorities began suspecting a vehicle had entered the water.
A crew with Hilton Head Island Fire Rescue scanned the water with a heat signature reader, police said in the report, and the sheriff’s office dispatched a dive team to the scene, but “ultimately, it was confirmed that there was not a vehicle nor a person within the pond.”
After “further analyzing the totality of everything,” authorities concluded an alligator exiting the pond had left behind the strange debris, the incident report says. The backpack likely became snagged on the gator as it attempted to cross Arrow Road, police wrote in the report, and the reptile was then hit by an unknown vehicle, which resulted in the vehicle parts being scattered in the street.
Police removed “most of the vehicle parts” from the roadway and disposed of them before clearing the scene, the report says.
Alligators are especially active on Hilton Head and throughout the Lowcountry during the peak of their mating season, which typically concludes by the end of June. Residents might see them sunbathing on a lagoon shoreline or moving between bodies of water in search of a partner.
For more information about alligators and how to stay safe, check out these safety tips from the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources.
