The grieving family of a California woman who was killed by two sharks while snorkeling in the Bahamas has now revealed how she desperately tried to swim back to her mother after one of the beasts “took most of her right arm off.”
21-year-old Jordan Lindsey, a student at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, was attacked inside a roped-off snorkeling area near Rose Island while on vacation with her family on June 26, the Daily Mail reports.
In an interview with Good Morning America, Jordan’s father Michael revealed how the family had decided to take a last-minute excursion before Jordan and her mother Kami went snorkeling while Michael went to pet pigs with the rest of the family.
The devastated father recalled that when he was petting pigs, a passerby mentioned a “teenager” getting attacked by a shark.
Michael “took off” immediately, and found his daughter in the water surrounded by sharks.
“Kami said she heard Jordan yell, ‘mom,’ and then Kami looked back and her first thing was she thought dolphins were around Jordan,” Michael told the morning talk show.
Kami swam to her daughter after hearing her desperate cries for help.
“She’s yelling, ‘Jordan, come swim to me,’ and then Jordan is not swimming so good and then Kami realized the first shark took most of her right arm off,” Michael said.
At the time, both Jordan and Kami were far from other snorkelers and there were no rescuers or guides from the Sandy Toes tour company nearby.
The second shark attacked Jordan just as Kami reached her daughter. The mother tried to fend off the shark by hitting it on the nose but in vain.
“They’re swimming slowly and Jordan said, ‘Mom, there’s another shark coming,’ and then it just hit the second shark hit again like on her lower leg and just took a giant chunk out of her and then that’s the last thing Jordan said,” Michael recalled.
Kami managed to pull her daughter out of the water despite the second attack, and swam to a nearby rocky area to wait for the boat to take them ashore.
The family released a statement last month saying the boat that finally took them to the shore did not have any medical supplies.
“There was no medical attention provided to Jordan. They had no first aid kit – no basic supplies for any type of injury,” the statement read.
“A towel was used to cover Jordan’s injured legs.”
Jordan was reportedly still alive as the boat took them to shore. An ambulance waiting on the shore rushed her to the nearby Nassau hospital.
But by the time Michael reached the hospital, “they said, your daughter is gone.”
“[Kami] seen her poor daughter die in her arms and it’s just – it’s crazy. Kami doesn’t like the nights because once she closes her eyes she’s back in that water again,” Michael said.
The last thing the heartbroken father remembers is kissing his daughter on the forehead.
“I just kissed her on the forehead and said, see you later, Jordan,” he said.
Gianna Gabrielle-Kasparek, Jordan’s girlfriend, described Jordan as “really smart” and said she had “the biggest heart.”
“She cared a lot about me and her family,” Gianna said.
