Florida Man Swims in Lake Full of Alligators, Allegedly Attempts to Assault Police Officers with Garden Shears, Is Fatally Shot

A 42-year-old man in Florida was fatally shot after surviving a swim through a lake full of alligators and allegedly attempting to assault police officers who responded to the scene.

On Monday, May 26, Timothy Schulz died after members of the Polk County Sheriff’s Office opened fire on him, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said during a press briefing that was live-streamed on Facebook.

Judd said that his officers were first alerted about Schulz that day when they received a call about him around 5:56 a.m. At the time, the 911 caller described him as being “bizarre” and “shaking” while at a local racetrack.

Responding officers were unable to find him when they arrived at the track approximately three minutes after the call came in. Judd said that a search for Schulz went on for around half an hour before it was called off.

A second call about Schulz came in around 7:43 a.m. In it, a witness described him as “this white guy,” noting that he was in a lake with “a lot of alligators.”

Judd said that the caller was concerned that Schulz was “drunk or high or something.”

Schulz reportedly refused a life preserver, which a witness offered him. Another reportedly ran away from the lake after Schulz “growled” at them.

“Our deputies immediately arrived,” Judd said, noting that Schulz was able to get out of the lake and did appear to have sustained an injury to his arm. “As they were arriving, he was walking from the lake between the houses, and he had a set of garden shears with him.”

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The deputies allegedly witnessed Schulz attempting to break into a car by throwing a brick at the window. At that time, they attempted to arrest him using non-lethal measures.

However, their attempts were unsuccessful, and he “immediately charged the deputies, holding the shears,” Judd alleged, recalling a conversation with a witness.

Schulz was hit with a taser but continued to approach the police. Once he tried to reach into the police car in an apparent attempt to steal one of their firearms, the police opened fire.

Judd said that he was “shot multiple times,” adding, “As a result, Timothy is deceased.”

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“He tried to assault my deputies with shears. Then he jumped into their vehicle, which is an armed burglary with the shears trying to get the rifle and/or the shotgun out. At that moment in time, all the warnings had to stop, and the action had to begin. And that’s when they shot him enough to stop the threat,” Judd said, noting that a witness to the incident allegedly thought that officers should not have waited as long to escalate to lethal force.

The deadly shooting is under investigation, and the two officers involved are on standard administrative leave until it is completed. Judd said that they would also go through a “mandatory evaluation” and would undergo a “debriefing by our psych team.”

One of the officers was “still in training,” and the sheriff praised his behavior, saying, “Both of them shot.”

Schulz reportedly had a “long” criminal history in the area, with Judd saying that he had multiple prior run-ins. Most recently, he was arrested in April 2025 and was only released on May 20. His previous legal troubles involved his use of methamphetamines.

Per a press release shared with PEOPLE, Schulz’s arrest at the time stemmed from possession of meth.

Regarding the incident, Judd stressed that his officers responded the best way and that he had no regrets.

“We’re going to shoot you just enough so you don’t want to ever do that again or can’t do that ever again,” he said about the decision to escalate to lethal force.

He also stressed the dangers that drugs like meth pose to users.

“He swam a long way across this lake. And the fact that he was bitten by an alligator significantly and still continued his rampage is shocking,” Judd said. “But if you’re on enough meth, then the person you see is not the person attacking.”

Judd stressed that Schulz was deceased, describing him as being “deader than 4 o’clock.”

In a press release shared with PEOPLE, the sheriff’s office said that there were four investigations into the incident: “an independent investigation by the 10th Judicial Circuit’s Officer Involved Deadly Incident (OIDI) Task Force; an internal investigation by the PCSO Administrative Investigations Unit; the Polk County Medical Examiner conducts the autopsy to determine the manner and cause of death.”