BOY, 3, FOUND DEAD IN ALLIGATOR'S MOUTH.

Byline: Phil Long Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire

In the last act of his life, Adam Trevor Binford, age 3, took a small step in a shallow lily pad. He held in his hand some wildflowers for his mommy.

Then, abruptly, like a ``bolt of lightning,'' a game officer said, an 11-foot bull alligator exploded from the water.

The gator grabbed the boy, swam away, and disappeared - from 12:43 p.m. Friday until 8:10 a.m. Saturday.

That's when three blasts from a trapper's shotgun shattered the stillness, echoing a mile across the serene surface of Lake Ashby.

First, two quick pops. Three seconds later, a third.

Thus, Curtis Lucas, the trapper, ended the search for boy and beast about a mile from the attack in this murky 3,200-acre lake.

He found the dead child in the mouth of the alligator, the teeth upon the torso.

After Lucas was sure that the alligator was dead, he gently recovered the body of Adam Trevor Binford.

Then, he reached into the water and grabbed the alligator so it wouldn't sink. Four boatloads of police and game officers raced across the lake toward him.

``We are positive at this point that this was the animal involved, `` said Volusia County sheriff's Capt. Jake Ehrhart. ``We did a brief necropsy on the scene and we recovered some parts.''

Adam, a spunky kid with big eyes and a heart-melting smile, is the eighth person to die of an alligator attack in Florida in the past 53 years.

The most recent deaths occurred in 1993 when alligators caught and killed a 70-year-old woman in Sumpter County and a 10-year-old at Jonathan Dickenson State Park, south of Stuart.

Police on Saturday tried to reconstruct what happened at Lake Ashby.

Adam, a tousled brown haired ball of energy, strayed outside the roped-off swimming area of a county park. He was there with his mother, Lorri, 31, brother Evan, 8, and cousin Cassidy Bass, 9.

He stood in no more than 12 inches of water. His dog, Charlie, a small beagle-looking short-hair, romped nearby.

Lorri Binford, of nearby New Smyrna Beach, no more than a few yards away, suddenly heard a ``big splash,'' much too big for just a frolicking kid.

She rushed toward him, but it was too late, police said. She never saw the alligator.

Capt. Wayne King, of the Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission, figured the alligator hit ``like lightning.'' He is in charge of the investigation.

``We feel like the attack was prompted by the fact that the child was playing in the water with animals, with dogs running all round and the size of the child.

``A gator will lay off and stalk his prey,'' King said, ``. . . like he was stalking this dog, and come up right at the last instant and attack. There was a dog involved where the child was playing and as far as the gator knows, it was not a person, just another animal.''

Alligators normally eat turtles, raccoons, snakes and small varmints, King said. Generally speaking, they are not aggressive and they fear people.

When Lucas, the trapper, found Adam, ``The alligator was right up next to him,'' King said, not far from its den, apparently protecting its quarry.

The lesson to be learned, King said, is that every lake is a potential home for alligators and no water is too shallow.

Alligators are more likely to attack humans during mating season, late spring and early summer. ``This is a wilderness and we know that in most all lakes in Florida, there are alligators, just like mosquitoes and snakes,'' King said.

Humans insist on feeding alligators. When that happens, they lose their fear of humans, King said, a sure invitation to trouble.