A man who walked into a convenience store with a live alligator tucked under his arm — with the whole fiasco recorded — was arrested in Jacksonville, Florida, last week.
Robert Timothy Barr, 28 — who’s also known as Robby Stratton — and Kevin Scott Keene, 23, were charged with illegal possession of an alligator, illegal exhibition of dangerous wildlife and cruelty to animals, local news station WJXT4 reported.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, which is investigating the incident, told HuffPost on Monday it is still trying to identify another individual in the case.
Barr was seen in a viral Facebook video boastfully running around the convenience store in late July carrying the 4- to 5-foot alligator whose mouth was duct-taped shut, per news station WTLV.
In the video, Barr enters the store and asks:
“Y’ all ain’t out of beer, are you?”
He then sees someone at the back of the store and yells, “Is he taking the last bit of beer? You aren’t taking the last bit of beer are you?”
He jokingly runs after the person while the animal’s tail wags around until he gets to a walk-in cooler. He then grabs a large pack of what appears to be Busch beer.
The person recording the video can also be heard saying, “It’s alive.”
Laughter can be heard throughout the recording.
Barr later told news station WJAX-CBS 47, “This store sells some good liquor and I drank a lot of it that night.”
He also said he had “no clue” how he and the alligator got matched up, insisting that when he pulled up to the store the reptile just happened to be in the back of his truck.
Another disturbing Facebook Live video obtained by WJAX, however, may shed some light on how the bizarre beer run came to fruition.
In this video Barr can be seen holding the reptile.
“This (expletive) had a weed eater in his hand, looked over and found him,” Barr said in the video.
“I was working and he came up to me and I dove on his (expletive),” said Keene, the friend of Barr who was also charged.
State conservation commission officials are now looking for an unidentified man who is also featured in this video (see below) who can be seen stepping on the animal. He later holds it up and yells “Florida State, baby!”
Florida State University is the rival of University of Florida, whose mascot is a gator.
Barr told WJAX that he doesn’t know the man in the video and does not condone his behavior.
He told the outlet that he was drunk by the time he encountered the animal and thought he was dead. Barr said once he realized it was alive — sometime after he forced it to be his accomplice in booze-fueled foolery — he released it into a creek near the store.
“I definitely regret it,” he said. “It was stupid.”
If you recognize the man stepping on the alligator, you’re encouraged to call the conservation commission’s Wildlife Alert hotline at 888-404-3922.