A teenage girl had her leg bitten off by a tiger shark in a horrifying scene a day after an 11-year-old boy endured a similar attack at another beach just a few miles away.
Disturbing video of the incident shows Marcela Vitoria de Lima Santos, 19, being dragged to shore by a lifeguard and bystanders after she was bitten, eerily resembling footage captured at the nearby beach during the shark mauling a day earlier.
Once on shore, an off-duty doctor rushed to her side and tied a tourniquet to stanch the bleeding on her badly bitten leg before she was rushed to Hospital da Restauracao, a fast-thinking move hospital director Petrus de Andrade Lima said saved her life.
“For patients who are experiencing such severe hemorrhages where there is an imminent risk to life, we have to stop the bleeding, and in the case of limbs, especially amputated limbs like hers, the tourniquet saves lives.”
Lima said the badly injured woman’s leg was amputated at the thigh.
“She will possibly still need more blood. She was in profound hemorrhagic shock, received blood, will likely need more, and there is a second concern that all these patients who suffer an animal bite face, which is the risk of infection,” he said.
The woman’s cousin told a local TV station, “I went into the water because she was drifting a little farther away, losing strength”.
“I grabbed her by the arm and brought her back, pulling her, swimming toward the shore, and people came and helped me. She was very badly injured; she had already lost her leg.”
The teen was treated in the same hospital where 11-year-old bite victim Joao Lucas Castor Nemezio Sales was taken a day earlier after an attack at Piedade Beach — just 10 minutes down the coast from Boa Viagem beach where the second mauling took place.
He lost his left leg and suffered serious injuries to his left hand, hip and leg in the brutal encounter with a bull shark, authorities said.
According to the State Committee for Monitoring Shark Incidents (CEMIT), Monday’s attack was the 84th recorded shark incident in Pernambuco since monitoring began in 1992.
It was also the fourth shark encounter in the state this year, including a 13-year-old boy who was killed by a shark at Del Chifre Beach in Olinda.
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