A shark attack on a Florida beach over the weekend left an 11-year-old girl with a strange souvenir — a baby shark tooth embedded in her skin.
Riley Breihan was boogie boarding in knee-deep water at WinterHaven Park in Ponce Inlet Saturday when she felt something sink its teeth into her lower leg.
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"At first I wasn't thinking about pain, I was thinking I got bit by a shark and
I have to go to the emergency room," she told Florida's WKMG Local 6. "Then I felt the sting and it hurt real bad."
The shark bit her twice — once on the lower leg and once on the heel. A couple of strangers quickly jumped into action, wrapping her leg in a towel and rushing her to their car, the news station reported.
When Breihan got to the hospital, doctors discovered a small tooth in one of the bites. She was stitched up and is expected to make a full recovery.
The shark attack victim won't be going swimming for a while though.
"I don't think I would go back in the water just because I'm going to wait," she told WKMG.
Breihan is lucky. Earlier this month, a
20-year-old German woman died after a shark bit her arm off as she snorkeled on a Maui beach.
The last time someone in Hawaii died from a shark attack was in 2004, when a tiger shark bit Willis McInnis in the leg while he was surfing 100 yards off Maui. McInnis suffered severe blood loss and died on the shore despite rescue efforts by beachgoers, police, and paramedics. The last fatal attack before that was in 1992.
Worldwide, there were seven deaths resulting from unprovoked shark attacks in 2012, according to the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida.
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