A mom’s arm was left “hanging” by “a thread” after an alligator pounced on her while she was swimming in a river, her son revealed.
Dina Spann, 58, was enjoying a day with family boating on the Silver River in Florida’s Marion County when disaster struck on Saturday afternoon.
Her shocked son, Zach Guerrina, who was on the day trip with her, told The Post that bystanders used Spann’s bikini top as a tourniquet to stop the bleeding from her right arm.
“The gator came towards her and she tried to shoo it away with a stick and it attacked her,” Guerrina said. “She got on the bank, a boat pulled up, she got in there with them.
“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 recalled.
“It was a crazy situation and she was the calmest one there, with her arm hanging off by a f–king thread.”
Guerrina, 38, a dad of five who works as a carpenter, said that he had left his mom floating in the river with two teenage relatives and his brother’s girlfriend just minutes before the gator pounced.
Spann is still in hospital receiving treatment for her injuries and may still need to undergo several surgeries but is in “good spirits,” he said.
She fought back with her hands and lost the ring finger up to the knuckle on her left hand before the gator locked in on her right arm, which has been amputated below the elbow, according to her son.
“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.”
Asked why the gator had gone for her and not the kids she was with, Guerrina said she was “in front of everybody.”
He said the family is relieved the youngsters weren’t attacked.
“My mom’s retired, she’s had a good life, she’s done well for herself, and she’s a good-spirited person,” Guerrina said.
“She’s not looking at it like, ‘Oh, my God, I don’t have an arm,’ she’s looking at it like, this is a crazy f–king story.
“I’m pretty proud of her.”
Despite swimming in the river being banned, Guerrina said he blamed the attack on tourists who have been getting too close to the alligators –– even petting and feeding them.
The dad called for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) to grant more permits for large gators to be hunted.
Brave paddleboarder Mike Head explained how he desperately tried to fend off the monster as it savagely tore into Spann’s arm.
He told Fox 35 that he sprang into action when he saw the reptile heading toward her “like a missile.”
Another good Samaritan, boater John Gamache, helped out by speeding towards the cries for help.
First responders then rushed the victim to a nearby hospital after she was returned to the shore.
Trappers contracted by the FWC caught and removed a 9-foot, 8-inch alligator Sunday, and the river was reopened to the public.
The shocking attack comes just weeks after a Californian woman was killed by an alligator in a Florida river.
Brittany Clark, 31, died after a huge, 13-foot gator tore into her as she was swimming in the Econlockhatchee River at Little Big Econ State Forest on June 28.
A boy also lost his hand in June after a gator bit him while he was on a fishing trip with his father.
Brodie Terry, 11, from Pennsylvania, was attacked in Marion County on June 27 by an 8-foot, 7-inch gator that pounced as he was about to release a fish back into the water.
