The Florida mom who lost a chunk of her arm in a vicious alligator attack has revealed the extent of her injuries — while also sharing her optimistic outlook: “The gator got a piece of me. It didn’t get the best of me.”
Dina Spann, 58, who is retired, suffered gruesome injuries to her right arm and left hand while on a family boating trip on the Silver River in Florida’s Marion County on Aug. 8.
“Recovery isn’t always pretty, but I’m learning to laugh through the hard parts and celebrate every little victory,” Spann wrote on Facebook alongside a video showing her right arm amputated below the elbow and half the ring finger from her left hand missing too.
“The gator got a piece of me. It didn’t get the best of me.”
The video, posted on Friday last week, showed Spann in the hospital with her arm bandaged and a medical professional treating the wounds on her arm.
Her son, Zach Guerrina, previously told The Post how Spann’s arm was left “hanging by a thread” after the onslaught.
He told how she fought back with her hands and lost part of her left ring finger before the beast locked onto her right forearm.
“She wasn’t just letting it happen,” he said. “She was trying to hold its mouth shut, swimming to the top to get a breath of fresh air and keep it from biting on her legs.
“It had her but she said she was trying to make sure it didn’t get to her legs.”
Trappers contracted by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) removed a 9-foot, 8-inch alligator the day after attack before reopening the river to the public.
Guerrina, 38, a dad of five who works as a carpenter, said he’d left his mom floating in the river with two teenage relatives and his brother’s girlfriend just minutes before the gator pounced.
Bystanders came to the rescue and then used Spann’s bikini top and a rope as a tourniquet to stop the bleeding from her right arm, Guerrina said.
“They tied up the arm with an anchor rope as well, so it had her bathing suit top and an anchor rope on her right arm, and she was just as calm as a f–king cucumber,” he added.
“It was a crazy situation and she was the calmest one there, with her arm hanging off by a f–king thread.”
Although swimming in the river is banned, Guerrina blamed the attack on tourists getting too close to gators, and even petting and feeding them.
Good Samaritans Mike Head and John Gamache told how they came to Spann’s aid after seeing the horror scene unfold.
The attack came just weeks after hiker Brittany Clark was killed by a massive, 13-foot gator while swimming in the Econlockhatchee River at Little Big Econ State Forest on June 28.
An 11-year-old boy also lost his hand in June after a gator chomped on it while he was on a fishing trip with his dad.
Brodie Terry, from Pennsylvania, was attacked in Marion County on June 27 by an 8-foot, 7-inch gator that struck when he was about to release a fish back into the water.
