A 9-year-old girl nearly lost her hand after a shark attacked her while she swam just off the coast of Florida recently, according to her family and witnesses.
The harrowing attack served up a grim reminder that the Sunshine state is a world leader in unprovoked shark bites against humans – though such cases remain rare and were evidently waning as of late.
Leah Lendel was snorkeling near the shore of Boca Grande, Florida, about midday Wednesday with her mother and two siblings – ages one and three – when a shark bit her.
On a video captured by a local sheriff’s deputy’s body-worn camera and published by the National News Desk, the mother, Nadia Lendel, said she realized what had happened when she heard Leah yell. “I could see her hand hanging … and just blood everywhere,” the woman said on the footage.
Nadia Lendel said she frantically tried to get the younger children out of the water while she yelled for help. Construction workers taking a lunch break nearby heard the screaming, ran over, wrapped a towel around Leah’s bleeding hand and called emergency responders. Nadia Lendel’s husband, Yevgeni, who had been swimming further away from the shore at the time of the bite, then carried Leah to the road to await paramedics.
Officials said Leah was flown to a hospital in Tampa, Florida, for treatment. The Lendel family told ABC News in a statement that Leah subsequently underwent a “long surgery”.
On Instagram, where she posts about parenting and has about 98,000 followers, Nadia Lendel later wrote that the surgery was meant to save Leah’s wrist and fingers. “Doctors … were able to get blood flow to her entire hand, and all of her fingers,” Nadia Lendel added.
Nadia Lendel then wrote on Friday morning that Leah “was able to move all of her fingers”.
“This is truly a miracle,” she continued.
The deputy who responded to the scene of Leah’s shark bite as his body-worn camera was filming video told Nadia Lendel on Wednesday: “Sounds like you guys did everything right that you could.”
The deputy also told the construction workers who aided Leah that they did a “very good, good job” wrapping a towel around her injury, and he shook hands with each of them Wednesday.
One of the men, who identified himself as Raynal Lugo, said the shark which attacked Leah was about 8ft long. There was “blood all over the place – you could see it in the sand,” Lugo told the deputy.
Lugo said he marvelled at how “brave” Leah was amid her ordeal. “Not even one tear,” he remarked.
At one point, the deputy’s video captured a paramedic asking Leah as she was on the ground surrounded by first responders: “How are you sweetheart? What grade are you in?” The girl calmly answered that she was going into fourth grade.
“I don’t know how she’s doing this so well,” Nadia Lendel is shown telling the deputy about her daughter at another instance. “She’s just handling it.”
The number of bites like that which victimized Leah in 2024 was significantly below average, according to the most recent edition of the Florida Museum of Natural History’s international shark attack file.
There had been 47 confirmed unprovoked shark bites across the globe last year after an average of 64 annually between 2019 and 2023, said the file, a renowned resource.
Twenty-eight of 2024’s unprovoked shark attacks were in the US, with 14 – half – registered in Florida. The country with the second-most unprovoked shark bites in 2024, Australia, had five fewer than Florida.
