[A video of this is at the site above.]
Online commentators in the US have condemned the actions of an American woman after she killed a 465kg alligator in South Carolina.
Mary Ellen Mara-Christian, 48, made headlines across the US over the weekend as the 1.52m, 52kg woman who managed to kill a 4m alligator.
But she has since been the subject of criticism after reports she took two hours to kill the animal while on a trip to Lake Moultrie as part of the state's hunting season.
"This woman should be in jail, not on TV," wrote one commentator on carolinalive.com, a South Carolina news website.
Mrs Mara-Christian, along with her husband and a hunting guide, took hours to secure the alligator with rods and snares on the boat before shooting it eight times with a .22 calibre gun.
The shots did not kill the animal and so Mrs Mara-Christian severed its spinal cord with a knife.
Internet commentators have decried Mrs Mara-Christian's behaviour as senseless brutality.
"They tortured that alligator for hours. That's just plain sick," wrote a reader on Bostonherald.com.
"This is trophy hunting at its worst," wrote another on Cbsnews.com.
Mrs Mara-Christian was proud of her accomplishment, telling carolinalive.com that she got more than she bargained for.
"Your heart's just pumping and pumping," she said.
"He was enormous. You could see this part him coming out of the water, his big belly, then you saw his head.
"His head had to come out for me to shoot him."
She said that she sees hunting as a form of population control and she kills alligators because she loves them.
"I hunt because I want these creatures to be here forever," she told The Boston Herald.
"I shot an incredible beast and it was the hunt of a lifetime."
It was hardly the "hunt" of a lifetime. It may well have been the "kill" or the "execution" of a lifetime.
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