‘A genial spirit:’ Neighbors mourn loss of Sun City woman killed by an alligator Monday

The 88-year-old woman whose body was found in a Sun City Hilton Head lagoon Monday being guarded by an alligator was someone who loved tinkering in her garden and watching birds in her backyard, neighbors said.

Nancy Becker was trimming shrubs in her backyard, which backs into a lagoon within the gated community for residents 55-plus in Okatie, when she slipped and fell down a steep embankment into the water, said neighbors and officials from the S.C. Department of Natural Resources.

Becker’s cause of death, determined by an autopsy at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston Tuesday, was listed as blunt force trauma (due) to an alligator attack, according to Beaufort County Coroner David Ott. Her death was accidental.

Deputies from the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office were called to Sun City around 11:15 a.m. to answer a report that an alligator was guarding what, at the time, appeared to be a body, according to Maj. Angela Viens, a spokesperson for the agency.

DNR officials believe Becker slipped into the water where the alligator was while she was gardening, according to an SCDNR statement released Monday night.

The alligator, a 9-foot, 8-inch male, was removed and euthanized Monday.

‘She was a good neighbor’

“She (Becker) was an older person and a nice person,” said Mikey Caron, who lived next door. “She was a good neighbor.”

Caron said Becker loved her dog, a black-and-white Havanese and toy poodle mix, and watched the animal from time to time. Most recently, Becker watched her dog while Caron went to a show. Becker had a dog herself, a white poodle named Muffin, who passed away two years ago, Caron said.

The two last spoke Monday morning, a custom so routine for Caron that she does not remember what they talked about. The loss, she said, has been hard to talk about.

Bruce Iler, Becker’s other next-door neighbor, said she was originally from Ohio and moved to Sun City with her husband, Don Becker, when it opened in 1995. Don died in 2013.

Iler said his parents were friends with the Beckers and lived next door to them for decades before Iler renovated the home and moved in with his wife in the spring.

“She was a lovely lady,” Iler said. “Just delightful and a genial spirit.”

Becker was filling her bird feeders Monday morning, something she always did, while Iler and his wife were sitting on their back porch reading the paper.

“I saw the gator yesterday morning and Nancy an hour or so later,” Iler said. “I just caution everybody about sensationalism.”

He had just seen the gator, who lived in the lagoon, many times since he moved to the area in May.

Becker, who was a member of a widows group in Sun City and the community’s sewing club, will be greatly missed, said Iler.

“You don’t know someone for 28 years and then they’re gone without missing them,” he said. “You can’t just erase that. That’s 28 years of history.”

Alligator attacks are fairly uncommon in the southeast, but do happen more often in places like Florida and South Carolina. The animals are more active through spring in summer while the mating season, which typically begins in April, takes place.

The last fatal attack in Beaufort County was in 2018 in Sea Pines on Hilton Head when an alligator pulled a 45-year-old woman and her small dog into a pond after it grabbed hold of the leash.

The most-recent fatal alligator attack in South Carolina was on June 24, 2022, when “an alligator had taken hold of a neighbor” in the Myrtle Beach Golf and Yacht club community and “retreated into a nearby retention pond,” according to local law enforcement. The person died, and the gator was euthanized.