The Florida mother who lost part of her arm in a brutal alligator attack is opening up about the devastating injuries she suffered while maintaining a determined outlook on her recovery. “The gator got a piece of me. It didn’t get the best of me,” she said.
Dina Spann, 58, a retired woman, was seriously injured in her right arm and left hand during a family boating outing on Florida’s Silver River in Marion County on Aug. 8.
In a Facebook post accompanying a video, Spann showed that her right arm had been amputated below the elbow and that part of the ring finger on her left hand was also missing. “Recovery isn’t always pretty, but I’m learning to laugh through the hard parts and celebrate every little victory,” she wrote.
“The gator got a piece of me. It didn’t get the best of me.”
Posted Friday last week, the video showed Spann in a hospital bed with her injured arm wrapped in bandages as a medical professional treated her wounds.
Her son, Zach Guerrina, previously told The Post that the attack left his mother’s arm “hanging by a thread.”
Guerrina said Spann fought the animal with her hands, losing part of her left ring finger before the alligator clamped down on 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 focused on making sure it didn’t reach her legs.”
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission hired trappers to remove the 9-foot, 8-inch alligator the following day. The river was later reopened to the public.
Guerrina, 38, a father of five who works as a carpenter, said he had left his mother in the river with two teenage relatives and his brother’s girlfriend only minutes before the attack.
After witnesses rushed to help, they used Spann’s bikini top along with a rope to create a tourniquet and slow the severe 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.”
Swimming is prohibited in the river, but Guerrina said people who venture too close to alligators—sometimes even feeding or petting them—can make dangerous encounters more likely.
Good Samaritans Mike Head and John Gamache also described rushing to Spann’s aid after witnessing the terrifying aftermath of the attack.
The incident occurred only weeks after hiker Brittany Clark was killed by a 13-foot alligator while swimming in the Econlockhatchee River at Little Big Econ State Forest on June 28.
Another Florida alligator attack in June left an 11-year-old boy without a hand after the animal bit him during a fishing trip with his father.
Brodie Terry, of Pennsylvania, was attacked in Marion County on June 27 when an 8-foot, 7-inch alligator struck as he prepared to release a fish back into the water.
