Body Of Boy Taken By Alligator Discovered

According to CNN, Florida authorities have made a very sad discovery. The body of the boy killed by an alligator at Disney World has been found, bringing to an end the awful story which broke Tuesday. There's a pretty good chance you heard about it if you tuned into cable news on Wednesday morning, or happened to find it on social media ― a two-year-old boy playing in a lagoon at the Disney-owned Grand Floridian Resort was attacked by an alligator and dragged into the water, despite efforts by his father to save him.

The outlook was bleak from the very beginning, with local authorities stating early Wednesday morning that the boy's encounter with the alligator was almost surely "not survivable," and that searches were proceeding under the assumption that he'd been killed. Disney reportedly closed all the beaches at its resort following the incident.

Now, law enforcement's assumption has been confirmed: the boy was killed by the alligator, and his body has been recovered. This is the first reported alligator-related fatality in 2016 in Florida, a phenomenon that's been increasingly rare in recent years ― the state only had two from 2007 through 2015, a stretch of record-setting safety.

The boy was playing on the beach ― the Seven Seas Lagoon outside the Grand Floridian resort is a man-made body of water open to guests ― when all available reports indicate he was taken by an alligator and dragged into the water. His father reportedly went into the water and fought to try to free the boy, but he was unable to do so, and was injured in the process.

According to Reuters, authorities discovered the boy's body after hours of searching, with more than 60 people pressed into service with boats, diving equipment, and helicopters. They also captured and killed five alligators in the area of the lagoon and cut them open to search for human remains, but discovered nothing ― the boy's body was reportedly discovered intact. The boy and his family have not been publicly identified, beyond the fact that they're were in Florida on vacation from Nebraska. Simply put, this is the kind of horrifying story that's almost too heartbreaking to think about for very long.