Longform Narrative
“Florida Man Kidnaps Alligator from RiverQuarium”
The town of Albany is nestled away in the southwestern corner of Georgia, just off the banks of the Flint River, and has been there for over 180 years. Albany has seen its fair share of history; both fame and misfortune have frequented the town over the last century and-a-half and memorials of these historical events are etched into the landscape. Ray Charles was born in Albany; 76 years later a small park and statue would be built in his honor. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at the Albany Civil Rights Institute in the early 60’s. Almost three decades ago flood waters reaching over 40 feet nearly split the town in half; a memorial was erected of all those who rebuilt the now ‘unsinkable’ town. Flourishing near the banks of the Flint River is the Heritage Center Thronateeska (a Muskogee Creek word for “flint picking-up place”). There is much more to Albany and its history than first meets the eye, but not all of it ended well.
Looking at Albany from the perspective of its people leaves a vast divide between the inhabitants and their town. Albany was dubbed the “murder capital” of the world by the FBI in the late 80’s, and the eastern side of Albany grew a reputation for being dangerous – a reputation that still stands today. The citizens of Albany talk about “East Side” as if it were its own town, separate from the western half. The name is almost always spoken with a hint of prejudice and fear… or a heavy dose of sarcasm. There is no in-between.
Things have been improving for East Side at a steady rate, but the generational, institutional, structural, and systemic racism has already given Albany a tarnished reputation. East Side’s umpteenth theft or robbery are dealt with and swiftly forgotten, but as is the case with many towns there are still crimes committed that demand an answer. These kinds of crimes pose the kind of parasitic question that infests the mind in moments of rest: “Why?”
Such is the case with one of East Side’s more confounding crimes. Many residents were left trying to figure out what the motive and endgame was. There was no money to be made, no social clout or political agenda, no motive that could make immediate sense of the crime. This case became an urban legend among Albanians, and for good reason. This is the case of Nubs, an alligator from the local aquarium, and his disappearance.
The year is 2013, four years after the Department of Transportation shut down the 90-year-old Broad Avenue Bridge due to driver complaints about its stability. The city engineer, Bruce Maples, condemned the bridge for several reasons, but mostly because the footings of the bridge were no longer supported and much of the submerged concrete had washed away and left behind only exposed rebar. PCL Construction Ltd. (PCL) had recently won a two-year contract worth $12 million to demolish what could not be saved of the bridge and begin the construction of a replacement. As they start their work and November begins to end, Tommy Gregor has just been elected the Executive Director of Albany’s Artesian Alliance mere weeks after the Flint RiverQuarium joined (alongside the Thronateeska Heritage Center and Chehaw Parks). Nubs, named after the lack of a “finger” on his left anterior paw, barely measures over one meter and has become the most popular exhibit in the aquarium. Wendy Bellacomo had worked her way up the RiverQuarium’s ladder to the Director of Marketing and Social Media and was capitalizing on Nubs’ popularity.
The shape of the aquarium is interesting – it’s rounder than it is square, yet the main pentagon shaped enclosure has walls built like a pyramid. Being in the park downtown, there are signs dotted around the perimeter of the building asking patrons to keep their children from playing on the pyramidal structure. The aquarium was just too close to the park, though, so children still sometimes try to pull themselves up each successive lip as if climbing the stairs to a giant’s house. The danger is obvious: one slip, one misstep and the child would tumble to the ground below resulting in a lawsuit against the aquarium. While nothing of the sort had happened yet, the lack of security would soon become an issue.
Van Hai Tang is a 40-year-old man with short, black hair connecting to a thin beard wrapped tightly around his cheeks and chin. He has just arrived in Albany from Gainesville, a town more than 200 miles north of Albany, through a series of hitchhiked rides and long walks. He is exhausted and in need of food, drink, a warm place to sleep, and some fast cash. The ultimate reason for the money was never recorded, although Tang’s homelessness at the time serves as an apt catch-all explanation. In the end, however, Tang never got the money. What he did get was an arrest, a felony charge, and the starring role in a story as wild as the animal it involved.
Our co-star Nubs, being a cold-blooded reptile, is content in his open-roof captivity as the colder days have finally arrived and his enclosure was meticulously designed to keep him happy, safe, and warm. Still, Nubs vanished from the enclosure. It seemed he had engineered a genius break-out, but too many factors weighed against his escape. The cold weather should have made Nubs too tired to be active, the aquarium’s design was a flawless enclosure which no other animal had escaped from (nor had they even tried), and Nubs had only one place to escape to – the frigid waters of the Flint River. But there was one thing that the staff of Flint RiverQuarium hadn’t been prepared for… an accomplice.
Tang passed by the Broad Avenue bridge and only took passing notice of PCL’s construction crew as they toiled away late into the night to demolish the crumbling relic. It would only take Tang a minute or two to reach the aquarium from the bridge, and another short moment to climb the step-like walls to Nub’s open roof enclosure.
“I have no idea how [Tang] even knew about us or Nubs,” Bellacomo recalls when asked how the man knew where to go and what to look for. The confusion and stress on her face is just underneath a thin layer of makeup and she smiles as she speaks, but her heart isn’t in it. Nearly a decade passes after Tang’s escapade before she is asked to recall the event, and the weight of some people’s idiocy pushes her shoulders down to give her the posture of someone who is supremely tired. “I was shining a spotlight on [Nubs], sure, since he was the most profitable and popular exhibit we had. I was really trying to make a lasting impression during my first year as head of Marketing and Social Media. But there were no posters, no banners, no signs, news stories, radio announcements – anything – about Nubs. He was six years old and had already been an exhibit at the aquarium before I was ever even given the position.” When speculating how Tang could have known what he was after, Bellacomo only said, “Unless he had visited Albany before or was keeping up with our socials, there should have been no indication that anything of value was inside” (W. Bellacomo, personal communication, November 15, 2022).
Tang was either informed otherwise, or his plan was born from a potent cocktail of sleep deprivation, hunger, and exhaustion. It is possible that Tang was coming down from narcotics at the time, though no supporting evidence was ever supplied. Whatever the reason, Tang made his way directly into the alligator enclosure. Shortly after he made his way back out, but not without a souvenir.
WALB conducted an interview with Gregors the day after the theft. When asked if he knew what was happening, he responded, “We weren’t sure to start with, and then we started getting some reports of somebody seeing somebody with an alligator [. . .] then we came back and did a count and found out that one of ours was missing” (WALB 2013). Gregors hasn’t lost his sense of humor about the things that happen in Albany. His age and experience pull down at his features and gives him the look of a tired and amused grandparent. He is a serious, successful businessman, but he is still unable to stop a smile from creeping around the corner of his mouth as he retells the story. An intern made a confused, frantic call to the aquarium about a stranger climbing out of the enclosure with Nubs slung over one shoulder. “I mean it’s not…” Gregors’ composure gives just enough room for a perplexed chortle to interrupt his train of thought. “It has happened at other facilities across the country. This is the first occurrence here,” he finishes.
Tang, beaming with pride at his newest accomplishment, walked with purpose back to the Broad Avenue bridge. When he arrived, a location less than one-fifth of a mile from the aquarium, he began the second phase of his brilliant master plan: selling the alligator to the construction workers. They declined, of course, but the Florida-based PCL team was dumbfounded at Tang’s sheer audacity and assumed the man was an intern just having a bit of fun with them. One of the workers, finally realizing that Tang was serious about his proposition, asked the PCL supervisor if they needed to call the police. This was all it took for Tang to ditch his ill-gotten goods by tossing Nubs from the bridge and making a run for it. This was a painfully obvious admission of guilt and confirmed the suspicious nature of Tang’s actions. The workers did contact the police who ultimately found the homeless man. Van Hai Tang was placed in the Dougherty County Jail, charged with theft by taking, and held under a $2,000 bail.
The Broad Avenue bridge, which Nubs was carelessly tossed over, rises 30 meters above the cold November waters of the Flint River. Even if the drop didn’t kill Nubs, he would still be out of his natural habitat. Jenna Rathel, an aviculturist working alongside WALB, clarified why a river aquarium resident might not survive being in a river. “So when you take an animal out of their natural habitat, their home,” Rathel explained. “You put them into a wild situation like the Flint River, they could pick-up any kind of bacteria and parasites” (WALB 2013). Nubs survived the fall with minor injuries, but between the time of Nubs’ kidnapping and his unceremonious toss into the Flint River, the RiverQuarium staff were concerned they may never find him. “Most wild gators, if they hear humans approach, or any type of something that seems out of the ordinary to them, they’re gonna go in the water and you probably wouldn’t see them again,” Rathel said. With a hint of admiration and surprise she admitted that Nubs stayed close to his caretakers as they attempted to retrieve him from the river. While she believes this is due to the excellent treatment Nubs was receiving, she does admit that his rescue could have been the result of trying to escape waters far colder than he was used to. Nubs did bite one of his rescuers in confusion and fear, but the man did not need stitches and shrugged off the bite. Nubs was placed in isolation for 30 days where he made a full recovery and continued to be the star exhibit of the Flint RiverQuarium until his retirement years later.
Gregors held a meeting with the other members of the Artesian Alliance to discuss the security of the aquarium, and Bellacomo remembers. “We’ve installed a few extra measures since that incident,” she says. She lifts her hands to count off the new additions, one for each finger, pointing at each one she raises. “We have 24-hour surveillance cameras watching every enclosure, we have motion detectors on top of the aquarium, we have staff regularly take walks around the building to ensure no one is climbing it-” Bellacomo pauses, thinking, as she points toward a fourth finger she has not yet extended. After a moment, she gives up and lowers her hands with a sigh and an unenthusiastic shake of her head. “I mean, how do you really prepare for something like this?” She asks. “Just how many people have signed up for a job at an aquarium and had to think to themselves, ‘I wonder how we’ll keep people from kidnapping our alligators?’”
Almost a decade later the staff have had no more issues quite as perplexing as Nubs’ kidnapping, although they mention how often birds have landed on top of the aquarium and set the alarms off. It’s a problem they don’t mind having, though, considering the alternatives. Their main concern lies with the damage it did to Albany’s already less-than-stellar reputation. The Albany Police Department was already stretched thin dealing with East Side. Now, the park must be patrolled by the APD and the surveillance footage of the public park has to be reviewed regularly. Chehaw Park and the Thronateeska Heritage Center have increased security as well since, as Gregors put it, “If it happens once, it could happen again.”
While the story is considered a somewhat comedic highlight of East Side’s history, the locals aren’t as pleased with the repercussions. Albany didn’t have many family-friendly environments to begin with, and even fewer that served as an educational experience. Now that number has dwindled further. Turtle Grove Park, directly connected to the aquarium’s property and Albany’s own Welcome Center, is now dotted with imposing, red-bordered signs. “Attention,” they read in large, bold letters. “This property is under 24 HOUR video surveillance.” The signs do their intended job, but they also serve yet another reminder that nowhere in East Side is entirely safe. At least for now… but the strength of Albany’s residents hasn’t failed yet and they never stop believing in the endless possibilities the future holds.