Audio By Carbonatix
Independent Journalism in Miami Needs You
We need to raise $10,000 by August 9 to support the reporting our community depends on. Reader support keeps us independent and is playing a larger role in funding local journalism and shaping what comes next. If you believe independent local journalism matters, make a contribution today.
Florida legislators are hard at work trying to pass a law that would ban students from wearing baggy pants in the classroom, but baggy pants have actually saved a teenager life — well, sorta. Seventeen-year-old St. Petersburg resident Kendrick Williams escaped an alligator attack because the reptile could only manage to take a bite out of the baggy fabric and not his actual legs.
WFTS reports that Williams was taking a shortcut home from his job on Monday when he heard a noise and turned around to see a six- to seven-foot alligator.
“I heard the hiss and then I looked down and I seen the alligator on the ground,” Williams told the station. “I ran. I didn’t look back.”
The gator’s jaw did manage to take a bite out of his baggy pants though.
His mother tells the station the extra fabric might have saved his life.
“That was the advantage of wearing baggy pants that day,” Tanita Murray tells the station. “It’s dangerous. If a toddler had been standing there, it (the alligator) would have bit his neck or head.”
Coincidentally, a law banning students from wearing baggy and sagging pants to school will likely become law after this session. Though, the bill is more concerned with exposed underwear than the actual width of the pant legs.
Somehow, though, one Republican politician managed to paint the law as “pro-family, pro-education, pro-jobs.”
Follow Miami New Times on Facebook and Twitter @MiamiNewTimes.