A 17-year-old girl from Perry, Florida survived a shark attack on Thursday, June 30 off the coast at Keaton Beach after punching the animal in the nose and face, according to multiple reports.
Addison Bethea did everything she could to fight off the shark, and luckily got help from her brother Rhett Willingham, who's a firefighter and EMT.
"I didn't really know exactly what to do, but I knew that with sharks you're supposed to punch them in the nose to get them off of you, and I couldn't get around to punch him in the nose," Bethea told CNN.
"So I just started socking it in the face and then poked its eyes and I tried to latch it off me with my fingers, and then it bit my hand."
Bethea told CBS News that she felt a "tug" while heading back to the boat. That tug ended up being from a nine-foot-long shark.
"We were scalloping for about two hours and we went to the last spot, obviously for only like 15 minutes, and we were going towards the boat and I felt like a tug," Bethea said.
Willingham said he couldn't see his sister in the water, and then spotted the shark and a pool of blood. He went in the water to rescue her, and was able to get her on another boat where he could apply a tourniquet to her leg.
"I heard her make a noise, almost like something scared her," Willingham said. "I sat up and looked and didn't see her. Then she came up from the water and I saw the shark and the blood and all that, then I swam over there and got (the shark) off."
Bethea was then rushed to shore and immediately airlifted to the Tallahassee Memorial Hospital, according to the Associated Press.
The Taylor County Sheriff's Office said in a Facebook post that emergency assistance was provided to "a juvenile who had sustained a shark bite while scalloping near Grassy Island in water approximately five feet deep."
Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare (TMH) said in a statement that the shark bite caused "devastating damage to the soft tissue in her right leg," per CNN.
"The TMH trauma team stabilized her, and the trauma surgeon performed emergency surgery with a goal of restoring blood flow to her leg," hospital officials added.
Bethea is scheduled to have her right leg amputated above the knee on Tuesday. Despite the tragic incident, she said that she hopes to return to the water in the future.
"Don't be scared of the ocean. I had so many people comment on my Instagram saying, 'I'm so scared of the ocean now'. But I'm still going to get in the ocean when I heal and get better. I'm still going to do what I love, don't just let fear overtake your life," Bethea told CBS News.
Michelle Murphy, Bethea and Willingham's mother, said that she's beyond thankful her son was there to help save her daughter.
"My daughter, by medical standards, should not be alive right now and I know that," Murphy said. "It's a miracle she survived this and I know if Rhett hadn't been the one that was with her when it happened we may be in a very different scenario right now."
"We've always been close, like since forever, so this somehow brought us even more close," Bethea added of her brother. "He's always been by my side and I've always looked up to him."
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