A 17-year-old girl is recovering in hospital from serious leg injuries caused by a shark attack while searching for scallops on a Florida beach.
Addison Bethea was swimming June 30 in a five-foot-deep (1.5-meter) area at Keaton Beach, 80 miles southeast of Tallahassee, when she felt something break through her skin.
"I didn't know exactly what to do, but I knew with sharks you're supposed to punch them in the nose to get them off your back," he told CNN.
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"I couldn't get to the point of punching him in the nose, so I started hitting him in the head and then I put my fingers in his eyes and tried to get him off me, and then he bit my hand," he explained.
The young woman was rescued by her brother, Rhett Willingham, a firefighter and emergency technician who heard her cry for help.
"I heard her make a noise, like something scared her," he explained, "I sat up and looked and didn't see her. Then she came out of the water and I saw the shark and the blood and everything. I swam over there and took [the shark]".
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The man put the teenager on a boat that was in the area and made a tourniquet to stop the bleeding.
But the shark did "devastating damage" to her right leg, said the Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare hospital, where she was admitted.
"The trauma team stabilized her and the surgeon performed emergency surgery to restore blood flow to her leg," according to their statement.
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However, doctors recommended amputating her leg due to the severity of her injuries, a scenario that doesn't scare Bethea.
"It's going to be a lot easier in the end. I'm excited, to be honest. I'm tired of sitting on the bed all the time," she acknowledged, surrounded by shark-shaped stuffed animals.
Bethea plans to get back in the water as soon as she can.
"A shark has always been there, it's just that she attacked me that day," she said, "I've lived 17 years without a shark attack. It's okay to go back."