‘HANGING OFF’

Shark Attack Victim, 10, Who Had Hand Bitten Off Speaks Out

The young girl’s hand was left hanging by a thread after the attack.

A young girl is back to sewing after a shark bit her hand off, leaving only a thread of skin. Leah Lendel, 10, had been swimming in Boca Grande, Florida, in June with her sisters, 1 and 3, when she was attacked. Through a miraculous six-hour surgery, doctors were able to reattach her paw, which had been left hanging on by a thread after the bull shark mauling. Speaking to CBS’s Inside Edition, her mother praised the skill of surgeons at Tampa General Hospital. Now she is undergoing rehabilitation to regain as much use as possible. ​​“They told me that they are going to put my hand back, but I didn’t really believe them. It’s impossible,” Leah said. The attack, she said, was over in a flash. “I think I saw like its tail, and then it just let go, and then I scream out, and I see my hand just bleeding, and I knew it was a shark,” she told CBS. Her mom, Nadia, was three feet away. “It was just [a] stump, and her wrist was just hanging off, and there was just blood squirting everywhere,” she said. “…She wasn’t screaming, she wasn’t making any kind of commotion. She was just standing there…” A GoFundMe has been set up for medical bills.