(NewsNation) — A youngster has described how she punched and fought off two sharks that attacked her pace she used to be on a public pleasure in Belize.
Annabelle Carlson, 16 of Colorado, used to be on a scuba diving travel along with her mother 3 hours off the coast of Belize in August 2024 when she and her siblings made up our minds to leap off their boat.
Carlson jumped off the boat first and advised “Elizabeth Vargas Reports” on Friday that once she collision the H2O, “a shark came from under the boat and started biting my hands.”
She reacted temporarily and “threw a few punches,” explaining that preventing off the beast used to be her first intuition.
“I didn’t really know what was going on, and then it kind of dawned on me that I was being attacked by a shark,” Carlson mentioned.
She described the shark as round 6 toes lengthy and mentioned it used to be a reef shark.
2nd shark assaults her leg
As she used to be being attacked, her public and alternative onlookers began to scream and threw a year ring in her path.
“I kind of looped it in my arm because my hands were pretty damaged, and they started to pull me in, and that’s when the second shark attacked,” she recounted.
She advised native NewsNation associate KDVR in Denver, Colorado, that community began throwing oxygen tanks on the shark in an try to get it off of her.
Annabelle described the second one assault as “pretty serious.”
“My leg was pretty much gone … it was kind of just bone from right below my knee to my ankle,” she mentioned.
Crisis reaction and amputation
It took Carlson and her public just about an time and a part to achieve an island, the place they might hurry a helicopter to Belize Healthcare Companions medical institution in Belize Town. Her leg used to be amputated there, and no more than 24 hours then, she used to be transferred to a medical institution in Miami for additional remedy.
In spite of the injury and an extraordinary illness all over medication, Carlson residue positive. She has already returned to scuba diving and says she chooses to concentrate on the certain facet of year.
“I feel like its best to see the positive side of things,” she mentioned.
Utmost Halloween, she dressed up as a shark assault survivor along her pal, who wore a shark dress.