MIAMI — Distressing 911 calls capture the frantic moments after a Florida mother was mauled by an alligator, leaving her right arm “dangling off” during a family boating trip.
Dina Spann, 58, suffered severe injuries to her right arm and left hand in the attack on Aug. 8 in the Silver River in Florida’s Marion County.
“Somebody got bit by an alligator. I think her arm got bit — it’s dangling off,” a woman told a 911 operator in one of two desperate emergency calls obtained by The Post.
“She lost half an arm,” the caller added.
As bystanders screamed and worked to pull Spann onto a boat, the operator asked whether her arm had been amputated. “I think so,” the caller replied.
During the second 911 call, a woman could be heard crying and screaming while a man told the operator that the group was on the Silver River.
“Her arm is gone,” the man said.
Spann’s son, Zach Guerrina, previously told The Post that his mother’s arm was left “hanging by a thread” after the alligator attack.
Guerrina said Spann, who is retired, fought back with her bare hands. She lost part of her left ring finger before the alligator clamped 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 working under contract with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission removed a 9-foot, 8-inch alligator the day after the attack. The river was then reopened to the public.
Guerrina, 38, a father of five who works as a carpenter, had left his mother in the river with two teenage relatives and his brother’s girlfriend just minutes before the alligator charged.
Bystanders rushed to help and used Spann’s bikini top and a rope as a makeshift tourniquet to slow the bleeding from her right arm, he said.
In September, Spann showed the full extent of her injuries in a Facebook video. Her right arm had been amputated below the elbow, and part of the ring finger on her left hand was missing.
“The gator got a piece of me. It didn’t get the best of me,” she wrote.
The attack occurred just weeks after hiker Brittany Clark was killed by a massive 13-foot alligator 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 when an alligator bit him during a fishing trip with his father.
Brodie Terry, of Pennsylvania, was attacked in Marion County on June 27 by an 8-foot, 7-inch alligator as he prepared to release a fish into the water.
Last month, Steven Hamilton, 71, of Winter Garden, was killed by a 12-foot alligator while fishing along the shoreline of Lake Apopka, about 15 miles northwest of Orlando.
His autopsy found that he suffered “blunt force” injuries to his legs as the alligator dragged him into the water before submerging him on Oct. 16.
