“My daughter was brutally attacked by a shark. She looked lifeless after her leg and hand were torn off”

A teenager who was attacked in a horrific shark attack appeared “lifeless” after losing her leg and hand to the apex predator, her mother has revealed.

In a scene that seemed straight out of Jaws, 15-year-old Lulu Gribbin and 17-year-old McCray Faust were swimming in the clear blue waters of Pensacola, Florida when a shark brutally attacked them.

Lulu was on a mother-daughter trip from Alabama when the attack happened. The beachgoers had only just learned of sharks in the water before discovering it was too late, when Lulu’s twin sister Ellie ran onto the beach saying Lulu had been attacked.

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Her mother, Ann Blair Gribbin, wrote online: “She was lifeless, her eyes closed, her mouth white and pale. The injury to his leg, or whatever was left of his leg, was something out of a movie. I finally came back to her and held her hand and she saw me, and I told her I was there.

A twist of fate that could save lives: two doctors happened to be on vacation on the beach when the attack occurred. They provided immediate emergency care to the injured girl, who was quickly airlifted to Sacred Heart Hospital in Pensacola. Her mother said she prayed the whole way.

Gribben survived the bites, but once she arrived at the hospital, she was told she would lose her right hand and her left leg would be amputated below the knee. She also lost two-thirds of her blood in the horrific attack.

By Saturday (June 8), Lulu’s vital signs had improved so much that the tube was removed from her throat and she began breathing on her own.

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

An hour and a half later, the same Friday, Elisabeth Foley, 45, was also attacked in the water at another beach along the Pensacola coast. Experts speculate that this is the same shark that developed a taste for blood earlier in the day.

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