{"id":58373,"date":"2025-10-02T12:21:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-02T16:21:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=58373"},"modified":"2025-10-02T12:21:14","modified_gmt":"2025-10-02T16:21:14","slug":"florida-man-arrested-after-trying-to-pay-bail-with-alligator-he-claimed-was-his-lawyer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2025\/10\/02\/florida-man-arrested-after-trying-to-pay-bail-with-alligator-he-claimed-was-his-lawyer\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida Man Arrested After Trying to Pay Bail With Alligator He Claimed Was His \u201cLawyer\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Deputies in central Florida say a 42-year-old man sparked chaos at the county jail after storming in shirtless, holding a live alligator, and demanding that officers \u201crelease his cousin immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

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Witnesses told investigators the man had shown up earlier at a nearby gas station trying to trade the same alligator for a six-pack of beer. When that failed, he reportedly drove straight to the jail, burst through the lobby doors, and loudly introduced the reptile as his \u201clegal counsel.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

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When staff asked him to leave, he allegedly slammed the animal on the counter and shouted, \u201cThis gator passed the bar!\u201d<\/strong> \u2014 before attempting to climb over the reception desk. Deputies wrestled him down, confiscated the alligator, and charged him with resisting arrest, unlawful possession of an alligator, and trespassing on jail property.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Officials say the gator was safely released back into the wild. The suspect, meanwhile, was booked in with a bond set at $7,000 \u2014 this time not payable in reptiles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Deputies in central Florida say a 42-year-old man sparked chaos at the county jail after storming in shirtless, holding a live alligator, and demanding that officers \u201crelease his cousin immediately.\u201d… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58375,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"14","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":true,"token":"eyJpbWciOiJodHRwczpcL1wvaTAud3AuY29tXC9sYWtlbGFuZGdhemV0dGUuaW5mb1wvbmV3c1wvd3AtY29udGVudFwvdXBsb2Fkc1wvMjAyNVwvMTBcL1NjcmVlbnNob3QtMTAwLTMud2VicD9maXQ9NDAzJTJDNDI4JnNzbD0xIiwidHh0IjoiRmxvcmlkYSBNYW4gQXJyZXN0ZWQgQWZ0ZXIgVHJ5aW5nIHRvIFBheSBCYWlsIFdpdGggQWxsaWdhdG9yIEhlIENsYWltZWQgV2FzIEhpcyBcdTIwMWNMYXd5ZXJcdTIwMWQiLCJ0ZW1wbGF0ZSI6ImhpZ2h3YXkiLCJmb250IjoiIiwiYmxvZ19pZCI6MTYzMDQwNjYxfQ.Vdl8DxY1ljgveKUJ9UYE0a9Q-FdnPKeK4LnSmJqfiKsMQ"},"version":2,"attached_media":[{"id":58375,"url":"http:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Screenshot-100-3.webp","type":"image\/png"}]},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[14],"tags":[12356],"class_list":["post-58373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-florida-man-arrested-after-trying-to-pay-bail-with-alligator-he-claimed-was-his-lawyer"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58373"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58373\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58377,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58373\/revisions\/58377"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}