A man is in critical condition with a “severe bite” to his right arm following a shark attack in Nassau County, Florida, waters on Friday, deputies say.
According to Nassau County Sheriff Bill Leeper, the marine unit was patrolling near Amelia Island—in the northeast corner of Florida along the Atlantic Ocean and Interstate 95—and received a distress call around 11 a.m. Friday morning. Once they arrived at the scene of the call, the sheriff’s office said they found an adult male with a “severe shark bite” on his forearm.
Leeper also said in the video posted on Facebook that the man “lost a lot of blood.” Leeper continued, “He was bleeding pretty bad. The deputy got on the boat, assessed him real quick, put a tourniquet around his arm to stop the bleeding,” Leeper said while calling the deputy at the scene a “hero.”
In the post on Facebook, the sheriff’s office says the man was airlifted to a nearby hospital where he is listed in critical condition but is “expected to recover.”
Newsweek has reached out to the Nassau County Sheriff’s Office via email Friday night for additional comment.
At 11:15 a.m. today, NCSO Marine Unit responded to a distress call reporting a shark bite. Our deputy boarded the vessel and applied a tourniquet to stop the bleeding. The victim was airlifted to a nearby hospital in critical condition but is expected to recover. pic.twitter.com/0QNuT2ceBp
— Nassau County SO (@NCSO_FL) June 28, 2024
Meanwhile, there have been other shark attacks in the Sunshine State recently. In the Panhandle region of the state, two attacks occurred on the same day, sending people to the hospital earlier this month.
The attacks took place off the coast of Florida’s Walton County on June 7. The attacks caused “devastating” injuries,” South Walton Fire District Chief Ryan Crawford said in a news conference after the attacks.
The first incident on June 7 involved a 45-year-old woman swimming with her husband in the afternoon. She suffered “significant trauma” and an amputation of her lower left arm. She is “hanging in there,” her husband said, according to media outlet WTVR, while also noting that she “has a super positive attitude.”
The second attack that day involved two teenage girls swimming in waist-deep water. Lulu Gribbin, 15, suffered “significant” injuries and was transferred to a trauma hospital in “critical condition,” Crawford said. The second victim in this attack suffered “flesh wounds” and was listed in “stable” condition on the day of the attack, Crawford noted.
In posts on the website CaringBridge, Lulu’s family has been chronicling her recovery. In a post on Thursday by Lulu’s mother, Ann Blair Gribbin, it was noted Lulu had two surgeries the day before. “We are hopeful that we are closer to getting rid of the bacteria and making every day more comfortable,” the post read in part.
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