A teenage girl luckily survives a shark attack at a Florida beach to tell her tale. Her account will leave you in shock and in splits as she recounts her experience. As her first instinct was to punch the fish in the nose.
The attack happened at Keaton Beach in northwestern Florida’s Taylor County on Thursday. The teen was scalloping in water approximately 5 feet deep near Grassy Island, just of Keaton Beach. There she was attacked by a shark.
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Addison Bethea Lives Through Shark Attack; Shares The Horrifying Story
The 17-year-old Addison Bethea narrates her escape to the Taylor County Sheriff’s Office.
“And the next thing I know something latches onto my leg and I was like that’s not right. And then I look and it’s a big old shark,” the victim, told ‘Good Morning America’ from her hospital bed in an exclusive interview airing Saturday morning. “Then I remember from watching Animal Planet to like…punch [it] in the nose or something like that. And I couldn’t get around to his nose the way he bit me.”
Addison’s brother, Rhett Willingham, a firefighter and emergency medical technician raced to help her.
“She came back up and I saw, like, the blood and everything, and I saw the shark,” Willingham told. “So then I swam over there, grabbed her, and then pushed them all, kind of trying to separate them. And he just kept coming. So I grabbed her, swam backwards and kicked him and then yelled for help.”
Willingham jumped in to put a tourniquet on her leg to control the bleeding while they were brought back to the beach on a boat by a good Samaritan, her family said in a statement.
The Sheriff’s Office Alerts To Be Cautious In Water
The teen suffered “serious injuries” and had to be airlifted to a hospital in Tallahassee, about 80 miles northwest of Keaton Beach, according to the sheriff’s office
Tallahassee Memorial Hospital initially listed her in critical condition. Doctors performed emergency surgery and were able to stabilize the teen. She suffered extensive damage to her right leg, according to the hospital.
Addison of Perry, Florida, is scheduled to have a second surgery on Saturday “to further investigate the extent of the damage to her leg and determine what treatment options are available with the goal of saving her leg,” the hospital said in a statement.
“Addison has a long journey to recovery, but she was in good spirits today, surrounded by her family in Tallahassee Memorial’s Pediatric Intensive Care Unit,” the hospital said.
The sheriff’s office said the type of shark that attacked was unclear but it was described as approximately 9 feet long.
“Swimmers and scallopers are cautioned to be alert, vigilant, and practice shark safety,” the sheriff’s office added. “Some rules to follow are: never swim alone, do not enter the water near fishermen, avoid areas such as sandbars (where sharks like to congregate), do not swim near large schools of fish, and avoid erratic movements while in the water.”
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