The Tribune

A NORTH Carolina woman who lost her arm during a shark attack while snorkeling in waters near Athol Island has credited her survival to the “Grace of God.”

Tiffany Johnson, the mother of three, was on a seven-day cruise in The Bahamas with her husband when the shock attack occurred on Friday, June 2.

“I didn’t feel any pain, I just felt like I had run into something. I just casually turned to the right to see what I bumped into and I was face to face with a shark and he had my arm in his mouth,” Mrs Johnson told American news station WYFF.

“I went to yank it (my arm) out of his mouth and that’s when he clamped down and we started to struggle.

“Immediately when I pulled it out, I just saw that I had lost my arm,” the 32-year-old mother said tearfully. “And it was just mangled.

“I had this determination like I cannot describe and I thought, ‘I’m not going to die here, this isn’t the end for me.’” She was about 15 to 30 feet away from the boat.

Mrs Johnson told the news station she was able to swim back to the boat using her left arm. Her husband, hearing her screams, swam out to meet her and help her get back to the boat and up the ladder.

The shark had torn from her elbow down to her hand. She said it wasn’t until she got to the ambulance that she felt pain and then it was excruciating.

In Nassau doctors performed initial surgery to try to save as much of her arm as possible. She and her husband were flown to West Virginia by Capt Meko Gibson, where she will be fitted with a prosthetic arm. Doctors predict that it will enable her to do everything that she will want to do.

Based on her description, US experts believe she was attacked by a Tiger shark.