BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. — The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) made multiple arrests related to the illegal harvesting, processing, and possession of alligators.
The investigation, spanning several months, uncovered extensive violations of Florida’s wildlife laws, including the unlawful killing of alligators, possession of alligator products without permits, and the illegal dumping of carcasses.
Multiple individuals were charged in the operation, including 25-year-old Luke David Landry, 20-year-old Jacob William Latreille, 24-year-old Wyatt Scott Lowe and 27-year-old Robert Gage Martin.
All live in Brevard County.
Tip leads to investigation
According to a 42-page investigative report, the investigation started when a citizen called FWC and provided three videos of Landry in possession of live and dead gators.
The report says one video shows a five-foot alligator in Landry’s garage with black electrical tape around its mouth.
Two other videos showed him skinning alligators in his garage.
Investigators determined he had not been issued tags to harvest alligators and was not a nuisance trapper.
Officers searched his residence and interviewed Landry who said, “My buddy had a boat they were harvested" from a site on the St. Johns River.
He said the owner of the boat shot multiple gators, telling the officer all the alligators were “Eating size, five foot or better”.
Landry said he and half a dozen others were on the boat during the nighttime hunt and “made dinner” with some of the meat.
Dead gators found at dump site
FWC officers discovered gator carcasses had been dumped at a site about four miles from his residence.
The investigator wrote in his report, “At this location we observed several alligator skeletons and hides dumped on the ground.”
Next to the alligators were plastic ice bags and pieces of rope.
The report says the alligator carcasses were in an advanced state of decay and had been picked over by vultures.
Landry said the people on the boat used a flashlight to spot the gators, then caught some of them with hooks and shot others with 9mm pistols.
The report says the owner of the airboat, Jacob “Jake” Latreille, told the other people on the boat not to pull the alligators off the boat when they got to the boat ramp.
He allegedly bought 10 bags of ice from Circle K with his credit card, iced the gators down and covered them with a tarp.
The men then told investigators they skinned the gators with box cutters, storing body parts in a plastic bin.
Photos show evidence of violations
FWC also seized cell phones belonging to the suspects which included pictures and videos of the hunts.
Photos and videos showed Landry’s son with a live gator, a live alligator in Landry’s garage and Landry and Latreille posing with alligators they harvested without permits.
According to the report, the boat owner, Latreille, admitted he killed alligators on multiple nights, he caught and kept smaller alligators and he sold one gator for $100 after taking its head back to his residence.
A witness, 32-year-old Derek Gordon Carr, told FWC officers the suspects brought gators to him after multiple hunts.
Carr told officers he had a deal with Latreille that if Latrielle kills them, he will clean them for $50.
He described one time when Latrielle came to his home.
“There were two babies that were alive, I just threw them in the ditch right here. All the other gators in the boat were dead,” Carr said.
When asked why they were catching baby gators, Carr said, “They were all drunk... they don’t know what the (expletive) they’re doing”.
The charge of illegally killing, possessing or capturing an alligator is a third-degree felony in Florida.
A court hearing is scheduled for Thursday in Brevard County Circuit Court.
Share Your Story with Adam
Adam Walser has spent more than a decade fighting for what’s right in Tampa Bay as part of the I-Team. He’s helped expose flaws in Florida’s eldercare system and held leaders accountable for how they use your tax dollars. Reach out to Adam with any issue you think he needs to investigate.
.
'They failed my son': Florida mother continues legal push for accountability after son died in prison cell
A Florida mother is demanding answers, claiming in a lawsuit that her son was killed in a state prison, but no one is being held accountable for his death.
