The trip turned into a nightmare: an alligator brutally attacked Dina

Dina Spahn, 58, spent last weekend with her family boating on the Silver River, in Marion County, Florida, when she encountered a huge alligator that ambushed her and attacked her. A few minutes before the attack, her son, Zach Guerrina, 38 years old and father of five, left his mother with several relatives, and witnessed the difficult event that his mother went through. “The alligator approached her. She tried to push him away with a stick, and then he attacked her,” Guarrina told the New York Post in an interview.

Spahn began struggling with the alligator, trying to close its mouth while swimming up to catch air and get it away from her legs, Guerrina said. During the struggle, Spahn lost parts of the fingers on her left hand, before the alligator locked its teeth on her right arm.

“She just didn’t let it happen,” said Guerrina. “It was a crazy situation.”

Spahn’s fight with the alligator continued, and she also lost her entire right arm, which was severed below the elbow. After that, Spahn managed to reach the river bank, where a boat approached her and she managed to get on it and save her life.

People who were there tried to help Span fight the alligator and gave her medical treatment. “Her arm was literally hanging by a thread,” her son told the New York Post. Spahn’s arm was tied with rope and the top of her swimsuit, which served as a tourniquet to stop the bleeding from her arm, until rescuers arrived and evacuated her to a nearby hospital.

According to her son, his mother is still hospitalized and may need a few more surgeries, but she is in a “good mood.” Garrina proudly said that his mother is retired, and that she is a person with a strong spirit: “She doesn’t look at it and say, ‘God, I don’t have a hand.’ She looks at it and says, ‘This is a completely crazy story.'”

When asked why the alligator attacked his mother and not the other young family members who were with her in the river, Garrina replied that she was in the front, in front of everyone, and for that reason the family feels little comfort that not everyone was attacked.

Although swimming in the river is prohibited, Guerrina blames tourists who get too close to the alligators – and even people who he claims pet and feed them. He called on the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission to grant more permits to hunt large alligators.

A day after the event, alligator catchers arrived at the river and caught an alligator about 2.95 meters long. After that, the river was reopened to the public.