(BOCA GRANDE, Fla.) -- A 9-year-old girl who was bitten on the hand by a shark in Florida is speaking out about the terrifying moment she was attacked.
Leah Lendel was snorkeling near Boca Grande on June 11 when "something hard bit me and then tried to tug me away," she said at a news conference Thursday alongside her parents and the doctors who treated her.
"Then I pick up my hand and it's all in blood," Leah said. "Then I started screaming with my mom."
"There was so much blood in the water right next to me," Leah's mom, Nadia Lendel, said at the news conference. "In an instant, I knew it's a shark attack."
"I just started to scream to my husband," Nadia Lendel recalled. Meanwhile, Leah's "instincts kicked in" and she ran out of the water, her mom said.
"Then my dad was with me," Leah said. "He picked me up and we ran to the road."
Leah's parents expressed their gratitude for the construction workers who were eating lunch on the beach and immediately ran to help them call 911 and put Leah's arm in a tourniquet. Leah's dad said EMS then responded within minutes.
Tampa General Hospital doctors praised the first responders for choosing to fly the two hours in the helicopter to their hospital where they said they had the expertise to help Leah within the six-hour window to save the tendons, tissue and muscle.
Doctors said they operated on Leah's hand less than an hour after she came through the hospital doors.
At the hospital, "I was trying to hold myself together," said Leah's dad, Jay Lendel. "I think I was crying more than she was."
Tampa General Hospital Dr. Alfred Hess said luckily a shark bite is not jagged, but leaves a clean cut on the wrist that doesn't ruin all the tissue.
First Leah's bone was stabilized and then doctors said they worked on blood flow. Some blood vessels were taken from Leah's leg to help get blood flow back to her hand, the doctors said.
Leah will next undergo physical therapy, her doctors said, and eventually the pins in her hand will be removed.
"I'm just thankful for everybody," Jay Lendel said. "I'm just very thankful she's alive."
Meanwhile, another shark bite was reported on Tuesday on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.
The victim suffered a non-life-threatening injury to the leg and was airlifted to a hospital in Savannah, Georgia, according to the Hilton Head Island Fire Rescue.
There were 28 unprovoked shark bites in the U.S. last year, according to the Florida Museum of Natural History’s International Shark Attack File. Florida recorded the most with 14; South Carolina had two.
Just one shark attack in the U.S. last year -- which occurred in Hawaii -- was fatal, ISAF said.
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