People broke the law, but it's the alligator who died.

Because Florida law prohibits relocating alligators larger than 4 feet in length, this healthy, 11-and-a-half foot animal was killed after some idiot tethered him to a tree behind an apartment complex.

From the Tampa Tribune:

That alligator gator stretched 11 feet, 6 inches and may have hatched when Richard Nixon was president, said Phil Walters, the licensed trapper called out Wednesday afternoon to corral and kill the beast behind the Rivertree Landing Apartments off Sligh Avenue, east of 56th Street.

The back of the complex borders a scenic stretch of the Hillsborough River just south of Temple Terrace.

“We had heard that a couple of people had caught and tied the gator to a tree,” Walters said.

That was indeed the case. A stretch of parachute cord stretched from a tree over a 4-foot seawall and into the river, where the gator floated at the other end of the line.

Walters said some residents told law enforcement that unidentified people “had caught it and was feeding it cats,” keeping it as a backyard pet of sorts.

Whether the cat diet rumor is true or not, Walters was unsure. He does note that it’s a bad idea to feed an alligator anything because the free food makes the reptiles lose their fear of humans and associate people on the shore with getting a snack.

Read the full story here.

Photo: Phil Walters/Tampa Tribune