A 71-year-old man went missing after an alligator attacked him in the flooded town of Slidell, just across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans. The latter has been severely affected by Hurricane Ida.
The alligator reportedly bit off the victim's arm.
The man's wife heard her husband's struggle and reached out to help him. After pulling her husband onto the stairs away from the floodwater, the woman rushed to find help in the Hurricane Ida-hit area.
The woman did not find her injured husband upon her return. The man still remains missing and is presumed dead.
On 30 August, Cynthia Lee Sheng, president of Louisiana's Jefferson Parish, a county included in the Greater New Orleans area, warned people, especially first responder teams attempting to locate those who were "stranded in the water in darkness last night", to be careful since there's a lot of alligators in the area.
Hurricane Ida was classified as a "Category 4" storm with winds of 240 kilometres per hour. It is being called one of the strongest storms to hit the region since Hurricane Katrina in August 2005.