The Florida teenager whose leg was badly injured in a shark attack on Thursday was punching and gouging out the eyes of the carnivore as it tried to eat her, her father said in a Facebook post.
Addison Bethea is now awake and alert in the intensive care unit of a Tallahassee hospital after nearly losing her life to the 9-foot-tall beast while wading off the coast of Keaton Beach in Taylor County. To scare off the predator, Addison and her brother bravely fought off the shark, which bit her right leg twice before swimming away, her father wrote in a Facebook post Friday.
“By the grace of God she was with her brother Rhett Willingham who is a first responder/firefighter who acted quickly to literally wrestle the shark and pull it into a nearby boat to an unknown person (thank you everyone),” said her father, Shane Bethea.
After getting his sister to safety on a boat, Willingham applied a tourniquet to her leg, preventing massive blood loss and saving her life, Shane continued. Addison was airlifted to the hospital after the boat reached shore and immediately went into emergency surgery, he said.
“[Doctors] he had to remove a vein from his left leg to create an artery in his right to try to restore blood flow to his foot and lower leg. The nerve in the back of the thigh was severely damaged. There’s an unbelievable amount of damage to her thigh area,” Shane said.
As of Friday, doctors still weren’t sure how serious the damage to her leg was and were monitoring her condition, Shane said. Addison will undergo a second surgery on Saturday, the hospital said in a Facebook post on Friday.
Shane also reported that Addison, who was under anesthesia until Friday, is now able to communicate by texting on her phone, joking that she beat up the shark and asking Wendy’s for frosties.
“She’s been through more than I could ever imagine, but she’s a trooper,” Shane said. “Please pray for her and the difficult days ahead. She’s not out of the woods, but she’s alive, and that’s what’s most important to us.
In a separate Facebook post, Michelle Murphy, Addison’s mother, wrote that her daughter was surrounded by her older brothers and other family members at the hospital.
“Right now we’re just asking for continued prayers for our sweet girl,” Murphy said. “She’s a tough cookie and she’s got a long way to go, but she’s alive and that’s all this mom cares about.”
Another “possible” shark bite on Thursday prompted Florida officials in Nassau County, which is about 150 miles from Taylor County, where Addison was attacked, to increase beach patrols over the Fourth of July holiday weekend, the New York Post reported.
The patrols consist of lifeguards flying jets along the coast of beach towns, watching for sharks.
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