Boy's Body Found In Gator's Mouth

LAKE ASHBY, Fla. - In the last act of his life, Adam Trevor Binford, age 3, took a small step in a lake. He held in his hand some wildflowers for his mother.

Then, abruptly, like a "bolt of lightning," a game officer says, an 11-foot bull alligator exploded from the water.

The gator grabbed the boy, swam away, and disappeared - from 12:43 p.m. Friday until 8:10 a.m. yesterday.

That's when three blasts from a trapper's shotgun shattered the stillness, echoing a mile across the serene surface of Lake Ashby.

Thus, Curtis Lucas, the trapper, ended the search for boy and beast about a mile from the attack in this murky 3,200-acre lake.

He found the dead child in the mouth of the alligator.

After Lucas was sure that the alligator was dead, he gently recovered the body of Adam Trevor Binford.

Then, he reached into the water and grabbed the alligator so it wouldn't sink. Four boatloads of police and game officers raced across the lake toward him.

"We are positive at this point that this was the animal involved, " said Volusia County Sheriff's Capt. Jake Ehrhart.

Adam, a spunky kid with big eyes and a heart-melting smile, is the eighth person to die of an alligator attack in Florida in the last 53 years.

His death underscores the peril of swimming in Florida's lakes, a danger made greater by the state's growing alligator population, the shrinking natural habitat and the animal's troublesome trait of losing its fear of human beings.

The most recent deaths occurred in 1993 when alligators caught and killed a 70-year-old woman in Sumpter County and a 10-year-old at Jonathan Dickenson State Park, south of Stuart.

Fatal situation: dogs, child

Police yesterday tried to reconstruct what happened at Lake Ashby.

Adam strayed outside the roped-off swimming area of a county park. He was there with his mother Lorri, 31, brother Evan, 8, and cousin Cassidy Bass, 9.

He stood in no more than 12 inches of water. His dog, Charlie, a small beagle-looking short-hair, romped nearby.

Lorri Binford, of nearby New Smyrna Beach, no more than a few yards away, suddenly heard a "big splash," much too big for just a frolicking kid.

She rushed toward him, but it was too late, police said. She never saw the alligator.

Capt. Wayne King, of the Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission, figured the alligator hit "like lightning." He is in charge of the investigation.

"We feel like the attack was prompted by the fact that the child was playing in the water with animals, with dogs running all round and the size of the child.

"A gator will lay off and stalk his prey," King said, " . . . like he was stalking this dog, and come up right at the last instant and attack. There was a dog involved where the child was playing and as far as the gator knows, it was not a person, just another animal."

Alligators normally eat turtles, raccoons, snakes and small varmints, King said. Generally speaking, they are not aggressive and they fear people.

When Lucas, the trapper, found Adam, "The alligator was right up next to him," King said, not far from its den, apparently protecting its quarry.

The lesson to be learned, King said, is that no water is too shallow.

Alligators are more likely to attack humans during mating season, late spring and early summer. "This is a wilderness and we know that in most all lakes in Florida, there are alligators, just like mosquitoes and snakes," King said.

Humans insist on feeding alligators. When that happens, they lose their fear of humans, King said, a sure invitation to trouble.

`Always a big smile'

Yesterday, law-enforcement officers picked up the stretcher bearing Adam's body, wrapped in white plastic and a white blanket, and walked toward the back of the medical examiner's van.

They paused. Then they pulled off their hats and bowed their heads in prayer.

For a long time, Lorraine Noe, 30, a friend of the family, stood on a bridge across a creek that feeds the lake, staring across the lake at a white buoy marker bobbing in the waves, marking the spot of the gruesome discovery.

She spoke of Adam. "He had huge eyes and always a big smile. He was a big boy for his age. He liked to sing. He was a really intelligent boy for a 3-year-old. Very smart, a very healthy, very beautiful boy.

"Energetic, definitely energetic, a happy-go-lucky child. At that age they don't have a worry in the world.

"I think Adam is with God, now," Noe said. "He's in a good place."

As she spoke, a brisk wind whined in the branches of 50-foot tall pine trees. Sprawling laurel oaks draped heavy with Spanish moss swayed in the breeze.

The family is devastated. It stayed sequestered not far from the lake's edge in a Volusia County Sheriff's Department motor home used in tough incidents, like this one.

"She's pretty much in shock," Noe said of Lorri Binford. "All she can think about is Adam."

At least twice during the night, Noe said, Lorri Binford got up, went to the lakeside and stood in silence: "I think she was letting him know that she wasn't going to leave until they found him."