Bystanders perform 'incredible' rescue to help teen survive Florida shark attack

Days after her shark attack in the Florida panhandle, where teenager Lulu Gribbin lost her left hand and right leg, the victim's mother revealed the girl's first words after waking up from the tragic incident.

“I did it,” she said.

Gribbin, 15, of Mountain Brook, Alabama, was one of three people injured in a series of shark attacks June 7 at Rosemary Beach in Walton County.

In an article on Caringbridge.org, Gribbin's mother, Ann Blair Gribbon, provided details of the attack and the teen's condition, explaining that the attack happened during her first outing to the mother-daughter beach with the teenager, with her daughter's twin sister. , Ellie, as well as friends.

She described the scene that Friday afternoon as “something out of a movie.” Lulu Gribbin was with her friends on a sandbar in waist-deep water, searching for sand dollars, when a shark bit her hand and leg.

A man and boy who noticed Lulu was injured pulled her out of the water by her uninjured arm and carried her to shore.

The teenager was quickly surrounded by beachgoers, including two doctors and a nurse. Anna said she was in another part of the beach and heard there was a shark and spotted a group of people standing over someone on the shore .

Shortly after, after running to the scene, she realized it was her daughter.

“I saw his leg injuries and started screaming,” Anna wrote. “She was lifeless. His eyes closed, his mouth white and pale. The injury to his leg or whatever was left of his leg was something out of a movie.

The teen was then flown to Ascension Sacred Heart Pensacola and immediately underwent surgery.

Lulu was then placed on a ventilator, which helped her breathe while recovering in the hospital.

Anna revealed in her post that her daughter lost two-thirds of the blood in her body, her left hand, as well as a significant part of her right leg which doctors had amputated.

She revealed that doctors expected Lulu to be on a ventilator for about a week, but she started breathing on her own on Saturday, where doctors took her off the ventilator.

“It was a big first step,” Anna wrote. “Once she settled in, her first words to us were, 'I made it.' And boy did she do it.

“At this point we will have multiple surgeries in the coming days and our lives will be changed forever,” Anna wrote. “Lulu is strong, beautiful, brave and many other things I can't count. God has a plan for her, and we will be there to support her in any way we can.

Elsewhere, local newspaper WKRG interviewed the two doctors and longtime friends who were on vacation with their families at the time of the attack, where they rescued Lulu.

Mohammad Ali and Ryan Forbess remember bodyboarding with their children in the water and hearing people reacting to the incident on the shore and went to the scene. Forbess said he knew how bad it was when he “saw the murky red water” of the shark attack after it came ashore.

It was at this time that the medical training of the two doctors began. They managed to reach emergency medical technicians and trauma nurses who were also on vacation and came to help.

“When I looked at her and saw the severity of the injury, I realized that anyone with medical knowledge should help her,” Ali told WKRG.

The group was able to attach tourniquets and apply pressure to Lulu Gribbin's leg and hands to save the teen's life.

“We might as well have worked with them for years,” Forbess told the outlet. “It was amazing. In a way, it was God's will that everyone was there to help at the same time.

After Lulu was admitted to the hospital, Forbes and Ali spoke to her family and were delighted to learn that she had survived the attack.

Anna wrote that she was “eternally grateful” to Ali, Forbess and others who provided lifesaving first aid to her daughter.

The first victim of Friday's attacks was Elizabeth Foley, 45, a wife and mother from Virginia, who lost her left hand and was seriously injured in the stomach. Gribbin was bitten, as was her friend McCray Faust, who suffered minor injuries to her foot, Fox 35 reported.

Walton County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Corey Dobridnia said in a statement Monday that the victims were in stable condition despite “potentially life-altering injuries.”