Leah Lendel 9 year old girl survives shark attack snorkeling in Florida’s Boca Grande as doctors manage to re-attach her ripped off hand. Nadia’s mom describes how doctors saved the limb.
A 9 year old girl snorkelling off Boca Grande, Florida had her hand bitten off in a shark attack, with the girl since undergoing emergency surgery in an attempt to re-attach the severed hand.
Leah Lendel who had gone snorkelling with her mother and her two younger toddler siblings felt a sharp pang amid shallow water, with the girl’s mother, who was four feet away noticing her daughter’s right hand was covered in blood and mostly torn off.
Leah who managed to walk back to shore herself was assisted by a group of nearby construction workers who wrapped her hand in t-shirt, Gulf Coast News reported.
‘Somebody [was] screaming, ‘Help, help, help!,’ Raynel Lugo, a nearby worker, told told WINK News. ‘It was like five kids on the water, mom and dad on the water, and I saw a shark right on top of the lady [and] little kid.’
Leah was airlifted to a hospital in Tampa, where she underwent a six hour surgery, with doctors saying they were able to put the girl’s hand back together.
The shark attack happened on Wednesday afternoon just before noon, while Leah and her family were on vacation, USA Today reported. At the time, Leah’s dad was swimming nearby when he rushed over to assist his daughter.
Leah’s mom, Nadia, expressed relief that her daughter survived the shark attack, while describing the process of how doctors were able to re-attach the 9 year old’s hand.
‘They had to get arteries from her leg to the hand,’ Nadia told media. ‘Got the blood flow back to her hand. Install pins in bones. Still has open tissues.’
Adding, ‘They will be monitoring her here for a week. But thank God she can move her fingers.’
Leah’s uncle, Max Derinskiy, who created a GoFundMe to help with medical expenses, told NBC News that she will remain in the hospital for a while, ‘and then a lot of physical therapy to hopefully get her hand functioning again.’
The Boca Grande fire chief, C.W. Blosser, said this was the first swimmer bitten by a shark in that area in about 20 years. Last year there were 14 unprovoked shark bites in the state, according to the Florida Museum of Natural History.
The attack was likely from a bull shark because it’s both mating season and ‘tarpon season’ — meaning there’s an abundance of fish that the sharks eat in the area, naturalist Rob HowellBull told WINK News.
