A man fishing at a pond in Florida was killed on Friday by an alligator that was almost 12ft long in a rare kind of animal attack, according to authorities and media reports.

Steve Hamilton, 71, was on the shoreline in the community of Winter Garden when the animal dragged him into the water, the Florida news outlet WOFL reported, citing local police and the state’s fish and wildlife conservation commission.

Emergency crews responded to the park where Hamilton was fishing at about 5.20pm on Friday after receiving a 911 call and attempted to rescue him – but they had difficulty doing so because of nearby alligators, the outlet reported.

Hamilton’s body was recovered from the water a couple of hours later.

Capt Michael Mason of the Winter Garden police department told news media that the alligator had been killed after the fatal attack on Hamilton.

Authorities were not alerted of a gator sighting on Friday at the pond, which is connected to Lake Apopka, Mason said.

The body of water has “tons of alligators in it. That is not uncommon to see alligators in this part of town,” Mason said.

The chief encouraged people to “be aware of your surroundings”.

The gator “looks like it’s docile. It looks like your Florida emblem, but it can be dangerous,” Mason said.

Alligator attacks are statistically rare. Nonetheless, at least 34 people have been killed by them in Florida since 1948, according to the Florida fish and wildlife conservation commission, which compiles reports of encounters with the state’s estimated 1.3 million gators.

Hamilton’s death came less than four months after a woman named Brittany Clark was attacked and killed by a 13ft alligator while swimming with her boyfriend in the Econlockhatchee River in Florida’s Seminole county.

Autopsy results released in July showed Clark, 31, struggled for her life before dying from the wounds inflicted on her by the alligator, which was removed from the river and euthanized.