Relying on his survival instincts to fight off the alligator, Jonathan Bruney quickly grabbed its snout and jammed his thumb hard into its eye
A triathlon coach was ferociously attacked by an alligator while swimming in a river during a training session for an upcoming race.
Jonathan Bruney, 31, was swimming in the Savannah River in Augusta, Georgia, with several other athletes for a race rehearsal on Sunday when he suddenly felt a blow to his right arm.
While he initially thought he crashed into a log, he soon felt a “cold pain” shooting on his side and then spotted the 4 to 5-foot gator with its mouth on his arm, he told WRDW.
Panicked, he grabbed the alligator by the head, shoved his thumb into its eye and wrestled himself free.
“I just knew the eyes were what you should target,” he said. “I put my hand on the snout, reached up and pushed my thumb into his eyeball. And he released.”
Bruney and the other athletes jumped in the river next to the SRP Park baseball stadium to do a practice run for an Ironman race taking place there in September.
“I knew there could be a chance of maybe a few alligators here or there, but I would never put my athletes into any sort of danger. And the chances of that are extremely rare,” Bruney recalled thinking.
They were about 1,000 yards into the swim, and about 60 yards offshore, when one of the athletes spotted a gator along the riverbank.
Bruney, who was leading the pack, was attacked seconds later.
“It was a pretty big impact to my right side… It felt as if my elbow had made a hard impact, maybe like diving on a gym basketball court.”
Fellow triathlete Matthew Davis was swimming behind Bruney when he saw the coach being dragged onto a dock and another athlete screaming for everyone to get out of the water, Davis said.
Bruney went into shock and was bleeding heavily from the deep wound that later required stitches.
Davis, a wilderness first responder, ripped the cord off his swim buoy to make a tourniquet.
“I told him, ‘It’s gonna hurt’,” he told WRDW. “I squeezed as hard as I could, and I could watch the bleeding stop as we applied the tourniquet.”
Without phones to call for help, the athletes began pounding on doors along the riverfront.
They eventually found a man walking his dog who called 911.
