THIS IS HUNTER Treschl, just two days after he lost an arm in a shark attack.
The teenager is sitting upright in his hospital bed casually chatting to reporters about his horrific experience.
Displaying an incredible level of pragmatism and calmness about his near fatal swim, the 16-year-old describes what it’s like to be attacked by a shark.
“We were just playing around in the waves, and I felt a hit on my left calf,” he says.
“I thought it felt like a big fish, and I started moving away. And then the shark bit my arm, off.”
Treschl said he was able to make it on to the beach in Oak Island, North Carolina, with the help of a cousin who’d been in the water with him. He said one of the people who ran to his aid had a belt with him that they used that to stop the bleeding.
Others, he said, “were all helping me kind of stay calm until the ambulance got there.”
Asked if he ever saw the shark, Treschl said he first felt it hit his left leg before it hit his arm.
“That was the first time I saw it, when it was biting up my left arm,” he responded.
The Colorado teen says he is going to try to live a normal life despite the loss of his dominant hand.
“I have two options: I can try to live my life the way I was and make an effort to do that even though I don’t have an arm, or I can just let this be completely debilitating and bring my life down and ruin it.”
“Out of those two, there’s really only one that I would actually choose and that’s to try to fight and live a normal life with the cards I’ve been dealt.”
A little more than an hour before the shark attacked Treschl, about two miles away, another shark attack took place.
North Carolina 12-year-old Kiersten Yow lost her left arm below the elbow and suffered a leg injury when a shark bit her.
Yow is in stable condition Tuesday at a local hospital according to a statement from her parents, Brian and Laurie Yow.
“She has a long road to recovery that will include surgeries and rehabilitation, but her doctors at UNC expect she will keep her leg, and for that we are grateful,” they said.
- With reporting from Associated Press
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