Two teenage victims are sharing their stories after they had a pair of encounters with sharks out in the ocean.
The teens said the shark attack injured them, but they didn’t initially realize what had happened and began fighting back.
Nineteen-year-old Damiana Humphrey said she fought off a bull shark at a beach in Galveston, Texas at the end of May.
“As I was turning, that’s when the shark grabbed me,” she said.
Someone snapped a photo of her in the moments after showing her in a green bathing suit with blood running down her left arm.
“At that point, it was already on my hand, and that’s when I started punching it, and then it swam to the front of me so its mouth was opening and closing, trying to get me,” she said.
Humphrey has spent the past month recovering from the shark attack after she underwent surgery.
She said that even all these weeks later, she still cannot move or feel her fingers, wrist or hand.
Humphrey described her encounter with the nearly 5-foot bull shark as it attacked her multiple times.
“It came after me again, and that’s when we believe it clamped onto the top of my hand, and that’s when I started punching it again, and then it swam away for good,” she said.
Beachgoers across the country have reported shark attacks recently.
Within one week, four people told rescue crews that something bit them in Virginia Beach. It is unclear whether those were shark attacks, but authorities are investigating.
Two people in those incidents had to be rushed to the hospital.
Last weekend at a beach in North Carolina, a 14-year-old boy had an encounter with what, he said, was a shark.
The teen said the marine predator bit him two times, on the leg and ankle.
“I was in the water, like screaming for help. People just looked at me and thought I was just screaming to be screaming. Like, I didn’t even know there was a shark that bit me. It just scared me so bad,” said the boy.
Luckily, once he got out of the water, beachgoers surrounded him to help him out, just like in Humphrey’s case.
“I don’t have any feeling in my hand. So we don’t know if that’s gonna come back at all, which I’m totally OK with, because I still have my hand,” said Humphrey.
Officials said shark attacks are rare and urge beachgoers to prepare for other dangerous but more common situations, like rip currents and knowing how to get out of one.
