So brave! Juliana Osso, a 10-year-old girl from Orlando, Florida, revealed how she survived an alligator attack over the weekend. See what she had to say in the video above.
Speaking with Inside Edition for a TV interview that aired on Monday, May 8, Osso explained how she expertly fended off the gator when it bit her leg during a swim in Mary Jane Lake, about 26 miles from Disney World, on Saturday.
“I was in the water and there was a mean nine-foot gator biting my leg,” said the elementary school student, who was swimming in less than two feet of water when the attack occurred. “The alligator grabbed my leg. I tried hitting it to release me but it didn’t work.”
So Osso employed a little tip she learned during a recent trip to Orlando’s famed wildlife preserve Gatorland, a.k.a. the “Alligator Capital of the World.”
“I used what they taught me at Gatorland, so I put my two fingers up its nostrils and it couldn’t breathe and had to breathe from its mouth and then let my leg out,” the young girl, who is recovering after getting stitches on her leg, recounted. “The gator didn’t do anything because he was too busy biting my leg and too busy with his claws in the sand. He didn’t have any attack moves to take out my fingers.”
Osso was released from Orlando’s Nemours Children’s Hospital on Monday. Trappers caught the 9-foot reptile not long after the attack. The gator was later euthanized.
