14 DAY TRIAL // A 12-year-old boy from South Carolina has stopped an alligator from attacking members of his community by wrestling and catching it.
68-year-old Joe Maffo of Hilton Head found out that a neighbor had been attacked by a gator so he enlisted the help of his grandson to help snag it. Tamra Shattuck had incurred wounds to her ankle after the attack.
"I have been deployed twice and taken fire in the war, but this was by far the scariest thing I've ever been through," she described for Island Packet.
"I was going to fight, and I was not going to let that gator take me," Shattuck says, recalling fighting off the gator.
While she was able to escape alive, the threat remained and she called Maffo at his Hilton Head Island's Critter Management wildlife control company.
She was afraid that he might charge someone else so Maffo headed over to the property with his grandson, 12-year-old Joey.
"When I arrived, I saw the gator for a split second. [...] I evaluated it between seven and eight feet," he says.
He sent Joey in the water and the young boy helped restrain the beast, until his grandfather could reach it.
"I went down and just let [Joey] fight it and hold it until it got to 16 feet (4.9 meters) out where I could reach it," Maffo tells ABC News.
"I stood at the edge of the water and reached out with a pole and put it around its neck and pulled it up to shore, and then he pulled the rope tight. I got on the gator and he came over and taped it," he says.
Joey describes being around alligators his whole life and not feeling afraid of them.
"I wouldn't take a chance on letting it bite me. [...] I just stay away from the mouth," he says.