“I did it”: 15-year-old girl awake and talking again after shark attack in Florida Panhandle – WSB-TV Channel 2

Ann Gribbins said doctors were able to take Lulu off the ventilator on Saturday. Her first words to her mother were, “I did it.”

LATEST STORIES:

Ann Gribbins said her daughter told her she and her friends were searching for sand dollars in waist-deep water when someone spotted a shark.

Lulu told her mother that the shark grabbed her hand and leg and then lunged at her foot. A man and a boy in the water helped her out of the water and two doctors and a nurse on the beach applied tourniquets to her wounds.

Her mother and friends were having lunch nearby and came over because of the commotion on the shore.

(LOG IN: WSB-TV newsletter with daily headlines)

“I saw the wounds on her leg and started screaming,” Gribbins wrote on CaringBridge. “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, was like something out of a movie.”

Gribbins said her daughter still faces several surgeries and a lengthy recovery.

“I know it was a terrible accident, but God was there and had the people there to save her life,” Gribbins said. “Lulu said she felt God in the back of the beach truck. She is truly a miracle.”

Lulu’s friend, whose identity has not yet been established, suffered lacerations to her foot. A few hours earlier, a 45-year-old woman who was swimming with her husband was also attacked by a shark. She lost part of her left arm and suffered severe injuries to her pelvic area. Her family identified her as Elisabeth Foley of Glenn Allen, VA.

Lulu is from Mountain Brook, Alabama. Walton County, Florida, is a popular vacation destination in Alabama and Georgia.

You can donate to a fundraiser for Foley HERE.