Girl's hand ‘mostly torn off' in terrifying shark attack
Nine-year-old Leah Lendel was bitten as she snorkelled off Boca Grande, Florida, on Wednesday, leaving her with severe injuries.
Lendel's family told NBC affiliate WBBH the girl went underwater and as she came up, she started screaming.
Her mother, Nadia, who was about 1.5 metres away with her two toddlers, said she saw that Leah's hand was covered in blood..
When Nadia looked over at her daughter, the family said she saw her daughter's right hand covered 'up to the wrist, all in blood and mostly torn off'.
Nadia proceeded to scream for help as she ushered her three kids to shore, the family said.
Meanwhile, Leah's dad, who'd been snorkelling 'some distance away', swam 'as fast as possible to shore', the Lendels said.
Leah was able to walk out of the water as nearby construction workers rushed to help.
'She was walking outside with [her] hand out bleeding, like really bad. So [a co-worker] put a towel on it to stop the bleeding. And I called 911,' Raynel Lugo, one of the workers told WINK News.
Witnesses the shark was about 2.4 metres in length.
Police body camera from the scene shows first responders treating Leah moments after the attack.
'Hey there sweetheart, you're being very brave,' one can be heard saying in the video.
Leah was airlifted to a hospital in Tampa. Nadia, a blogger with over 97,000 followers on Instagram, said she underwent a six-hour operation and is recovering well after doctors put her hand back together.
'They had to get arteries from her leg to the hand. Got the blood flow back to her hand. Install pins in bones. Still has open tissues. They will be monitoring her here for a week. But thank God she can move her fingers,' Nadia said.
'This is truly a MIRACLE,' the mother-of-five captioned a picture of her next to her daughter's hospital bed.
Max Derinskiy, an uncle of Leah's who created a GoFundMe campaign to help with medical expenses, told NBC News that she will remain in the hospital for a while and then faces 'a lot of physical therapy to hopefully get her hand functioning again'.
'The doctors worked miracles and were able to put her hand back together,' he said.
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