Mother of teenager who lost hand and leg in shark attack speaks out

• Lulu Gribbin, 15, was identified as one of three people attacked by a shark off the Florida Panhandle on June 7
• “I saw the wounds on her leg and started screaming,” her mother said in an update
• The teenager lost her left hand and part of her right leg in the terrible incident
  

The mother of a girl who lost a hand and part of her leg in a shark attack in Florida speaks out after this horrific experience.

Lulu Gribbin was one of three people attacked in two separate shark attacks off the coast of Walton County, Florida on Friday, June 7.

The 15-year-old girl was swimming about four miles away near the first sandbar at Seacrest Beach when the attack occurred, South Walton Fire District Chief Ryan Crawford said earlier at a news conference.

The shark bit off Lulu’s left hand and doctors amputated her right leg “halfway from the knee to the hip,” her mother, Ann Blair Gribbin, said in a statement shared on CaringBridge on Sunday, June 9.

Lulu, who was on her first mother-daughter beach trip at the time of the attack, lost two-thirds of her blood.

“Of course no one wants this for their child, but she is alive,” Ann wrote.

Lulu was taken to Ascension Sacred Heart Hospital in Pensacola and, according to her mother, was already undergoing surgery when her family arrived at the hospital.

She later described her horrific experience, which began when she and at least five others searched the sandbar for sand dollars.

Lulu said the shark “bit her hand and then her leg” before biting the foot of one of her friends. She then recalled a man “grabbing her other arm and pulling her out of the water” while “another younger boy helped him carry her to shore.”

Two doctors and two other young women, “one of them a nurse,” helped treat Lulu’s wounds with tourniquets, Ann wrote.

The mother said she had just returned from lunch with friends when she noticed a commotion on the beach. As they approached the scene, Lulu’s twin sister, Ellie, rushed to Ann and told her her sister was hurt.

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“I saw the wounds on her leg and started screaming,” the twins’ mother recalled. “She was lifeless, her eyes were closed, her mouth was white and pale. The wound on her leg, or whatever was left of her leg, looked like something out of a movie.”

Lulu was intubated when she arrived at the hospital but is now breathing on her own. Ann said her daughter’s first words after the tube was removed from her throat were “I did it.”

Despite the “terrible accident,” Ann believes that “God was there and had people there” to save her daughter’s life. “She is truly a miracle,” the mother said of her daughter. “We have a long way to go and our journey is just beginning!”

Ann also thanked everyone who helped save her daughter, including the person who pulled her from the water, the people who applied the tourniquets, the paramedics on scene and the staff at Sacred Heart.

“Lulu is strong, beautiful, brave and so much more that I can’t even begin to list,” Ann wrote. “God has a plan for her and we will be here to support her in any way we can.”

Authorities said Elizabeth Foley, 45, of Virginia, was attacked by a shark earlier that day.

Crawford said she was flown by helicopter to HCA Fort Walton Beach Medical Center in critical condition and had part of her left arm amputated.