A story about a nine year-old Florida girl nearly getting her hand ripped off by a shark is not really within National Zero’s preferred aggregation model given the lack of appeal of the cruelties of nature being inflicted on a child while she was supposed to be having fun at the beach, but it happened earlier this month. A week later came the better news, closer to but still outside of this site’s bailiwick: Leah Lendel’s right hand may make a full and complete recovery thanks to snap decisions by first responders to fly her to the right hospital, per a June 19th story at WFTS.
“That decision in the field to fly directly here was monumental because if they would’ve flown to another hospital and then had to go through all this and then were flown here, we’d have been well outside of the six hours that we like to revascularize a hand,” the story quotes Dr Alfred Hess, right above a pic of an X-ray of Leah’s hand after the attack. Fair warning on that one. It’s ugly.
“By flying directly here and having the great care that they had in the ER here and then getting them immediately to the OR, we were able to revascularize the hand within four and a half hours, so that is so much better for the tissues and the recovery and the future function of this hand,” the orthopedic surgeon continued, adding “Children have a much greater chance of gaining sensibility to their hands, so sensation and reinnervating the little muscles, the intrinsic muscles in the hand to get coordinated hand function, so we think that she should get all of that back, we’re hoping, and we want to see what her wrist does.” So it’s going in the right direction for her.
The WFTS story mentions “Chilling moments captured on body camera video showed the quick response from both Good Samaritans and first responders on the ground.” At least one of the Samaritans – Luis Alvarez, who ran into the water to chase the shark away from Leah and help carry her out – in all likelihood did not get to read this story. That’s because, per Fox 4, Alvarez was already in an ICE gulag, having been picked up on June 14th when the Collier County Sheriff’s Office arrested him for driving without a license and promptly handed him over to the Trump Regime.
“He’s a real decent guy, a family guy,” said friend Raynel Lugo, one of the other men who rushed to Leah’s aid, adding that Alvarez carried Leah’s sister to the shore immediately after the attack. “He jumped in that area to bring her out when I was assisting Leah,” said Lugo. “He went deep underwater, not even caring about the shark. He went really deep. He probably faced the shark.”
The WFTS story mentions Leah’s mom Nadia Lendel and her dad, Yevgeniy “Jay” Lendel’s name appears in a GoFundme for Leah. VoterRecords.com lists them both as, you guessed it, Republicans.