A 13-year-old girl revealed how she fought off a shark attack at a Florida beach.
Ella Reed was sitting in shallow water with her friend near a jetty at Fort Pierce Beach. Suddenly, she felt a sharp pain.
“It went straight to me and got my stomach first, and I tried blocking it with my arm and my hand, and it kind of slipped in, and got my finger and my arm, and it swooped around and got my leg again,” Ella told WPTV-TV. “It didn’t really hurt at first because of all the adrenaline.”
“The shark itself was so powerful. That was what I felt the most because it was hitting my stomach really hard,” Reed told WPLG.
Reed fought off the shark, then ran out of the water with several bite marks, and her friend drove her home on a golf cart.
The brave teenager was completely calm despite just being the victim of a shark attack.
The 13-year-old girl’s mother thought it was a prank, until she saw all the blood, and knew it wasn’t a joke.
“First, initially, I seriously thought it was a prank,” said Devin Reed, Ella’s mom.
“It was insane because she was totally covered in blood pretty much from head to toe, so she couldn’t really see what went on,” the mother stated.
“There was blood everywhere and she was more of a trooper than anyone else,” Devin revealed. “We were all just shocked that it even happened.”
Devin raced Ella to the St. Lucie County Fire District Station, just blocks away from their home. From there, the teen was rushed to the hospital.
Devin said Ella was shaking, but she was calm.
“She was so calm even when we got in the hospital. She was telling all the nurses, ‘You can take pictures.’ She was like a pro,” Reed explained. “Pretty scary stuff, but thankfully she’s there talking to you, and once you can see she’s OK, then you calm down a bit.”
Ella needed 19 stitches on her stomach, arm, finger, and knee.
“I was kinda in shock about everything that happened, so I wasn’t really in pain because the adrenaline was through the roof,” she said.
Devin had been living in the North Hutchinson Island community for more than 20 years, and never worried about shark attacks.
“Never thought in a million years, not my kids,” Devin noted. “They swim, go surfing. They know how to stay away from bait balls and stuff like that. The whole thing is surreal. It sounds like a movie. It doesn’t feel real, not yet.”
The 13-year-old girl believes that she was bitten by a bull shark that was as large as 6 feet long.
Within 24 hours of the shark attack, the brave girl returned to the same beach where she was bitten, but needed crutches to walk.
Ella said she plans on going back into the ocean as soon as her stitches are removed.
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Girl, 13, says shark ‘went straight to me’ after surviving attack