'He's all the way inside:' 911 call sheds light on seven-foot gator found in Venice home

VENICE, Fla. - A newly-released 911 call is giving deeper insight into the moments after a woman in Venice found a seven-foot alligator inside her home on March 28.

"He's all the way inside," the caller told a dispatcher during a call that lasted nearly seven minutes.

Last weekend, Mary Hollenback told FOX 13 she heard banging on her front screen door and initially thought a person was trying to break into the home off Palatka Drive. After asking herself how she was going to remove the gator, she called 911.

"He's probably like six or seven feet. I don't want to get closer to really find out," Hollenback told the dispatcher.

Sarasota County Sheriff’s deputies and officers with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) responded within minutes, eventually getting the gator out of the home.

As for where the reptile came from, Hollenback thinks it emerged from a pond right across the street from her house.

"He had to go through two yards. Cross the street and come into my house, but nobody saw him, and it’s very surprising," she told FOX 13.

FWC said the gator was captured and transferred to an alligator farm. 

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