Picture of a shark fin above water.Photo: Getty Images
“The shark bit her once and then attacked her again on her right thigh,” wrote dad Shane Bethea.“She tried poking it in the eyes and punching it but it would not turn loose.”
Police said in anews releasethat the teen sustained “serious injuries” from the attack and was airlifted to a Tallahassee hospital for treatment.
Never miss a story — sign up forPEOPLE’s free weekly newsletterto get the biggest news of the week delivered to your inbox every Friday.
At the hospital, doctors were able to “remove a vein from her left leg to create an artery in the right to try and get blood flow reestablished to her foot and lower leg,” according to Addison’s father.
Her family said that when she woke up on Friday morning, Addison “was in good spirits and cracking jokes about beating up the shark.”
Getty Images
“Everybody at the beach here ran over to my house — I mean everybody,” he told the outlet. “Everybody was shocked.”
It is unclear what kind of shark bit the girl, authorities said. The shark was described as being approximately nine feet in length.
“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,” the sheriff’s department said in its news release.
In 2021 the United States led all countries with 47 confirmed cases of unprovoked shark bites, or 64% of the global total, according to theUniversity of Florida. The number of U.S. shark bites is up 42% from 2020, which saw 33 incidents occur.
Florida leads the U.S. in shark bites, with 28 of the 47 confirmed cases (60%) from 2021, the university reported. The state’s unprovoked shark bites make up 38% of the cases worldwide.
source: people.com
