TAMPA, Fla. – A 9-year-old girl was recovering on Thursday from a shark bite while she was snorkeling with her family off a beach in Florida’s Lee County.
Leah Lendel went underwater, came up screaming with her right hand covered in blood and mostly torn off, and walked out to shore by herself in Boca Grande, according to her family.
Construction workers who were on lunch break jumped into action quickly. One used a towel as a tourniquet to stop blood loss while another called 911 for help.
“It was a big shark, like 8 feet ... we see the little girl crying ... we see the little girl coming out of the water ... everybody was in shock,” Alfonso Tello, one of the construction workers, told ABC Southwest Florida affiliate WZVN.
Fire rescue personnel found Leah injured near the 2200 block of Shore Lane, and told her she was “being very brave, very strong.” They later airlifted her to the Tampa General Hospital where she underwent a 6-hour long surgery.
“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,” Leah’s mother, Nadia Lendel, told the Gulf Coast News Now.
Lendel added that doctors will be monitoring Leah for about a week.
“Thank God she can move her fingers,” Lendel said.