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A brave paddleboarder has explained how he desperately tried to fend off an alligator as it savagely tore into a swimmer’s arm in a Florida river.

Mike Head was out on the water with his wife and kids Saturday afternoon when he spotted the reptile heading towards the female victim “like a missile” in the Silver River in Marion County, he told Fox 35.

By the time he reached the woman, the gator’s jaws were locked on her arm and he used his paddle to fight it off, he revealed.

“I couldn’t swing because I knew I was going to hit her in the head from my position, so I come around the other side,” Head said.

“And then I swing, because I can see it still, and I don’t know if I hit it or not. I just know that it was gone after I hit.”

The woman was then pulled to the shore with the help of another boater and Head said that when he tied her bleeding wound off with a rope, she turned to him and said “Tie it tight”.

Relatives told Fox 35 the victim is back at home recovering and in good spirits despite having her right arm amputated.