A 13-year-old girl is on the mend after fighting a shark swimming off the coast of Fort Pierce, Florida.
Ella Reed recounted her ordeal on the “Today” show Monday, saying her encounter with what she believes was a bull shark left her with 19 stitches and a new outlook on life.
“I remember just breathing really heavily, and then when it latched onto my stomach, not being able to breathe at all, because I was just like, ‘What the heck is happening?’” Ella, who lives near where the attack took place, said on “Today.”
She said she first tried to push the shark away while yelling at a nearby friend for help, but after the shark returned, she had no choice but to fight back.
“It bit me in the stomach first,” she said. “And right as it bit me in the stomach, I shoved my arm where it was biting me, so it didn’t get my stomach and it got my arm instead,” Ella said. “Then I hit it with my other hand, like, hit its nose or its face.”
The shark bit Ella on her torso, arm, finger and knee. She was ultimately able to escape to the beach, where she FaceTimed her brother for help.
Ella’s mother Devin Reed initially found the situation almost impossible to believe, telling “Today”: “At first I thought she was joking, actually, and then she says, ‘I’m not joking!’ And she took the camera and she panned it on her body. I kind of just froze and freaked out.”
Reed said Ella plans to embrace her newfound scars, telling “Today”: “She’s like, ‘If I went through it, I’m going to show people.’”
While shark attacks are exceedingly rare, they’re not unheard of.
A 58-year-old surfer was hospitalized in Hawaii in April after a struggle with a tiger shark. At the beginning of the year, a great white shark fatally attacked a diver off the coast of Mexico.