The courageous Florida teen who barely survived a brutal shark attack last week described Monday how she battled for her life before her brother finally fought off the predator.
Addison Bethea — who has to have her right leg amputated above the knee this week because of the attack — was scalloping in shallow waters in Taylor County when a 9-foot shark suddenly latched onto her, she told CNN.
Bethea, 17, recalled how she desperately tried to fend it off.
“I knew with sharks that you’re supposed to punch them in the nose to get them off of you,” she said calmly from her hospital bed. “I couldn’t get around to punch it in the nose, so I just started socking it in the face and poked its eyes.”
When that didn’t work, Bethea used her bare hand to try to pry the shark’s jaws off of her, she said.
“I tried to latch it off of me with my fingers, and then it bit my hand,” she said. “And then I screamed for help.”
Luckily, Bethea’s 22-year-old brother was also scalloping nearby.
The sibling, Rhett Willingham, an EMT first responder, said he heard a yelp and turned to look for his sister. But she had already been pulled under by the predator.
“Then she came up from the water, and I saw the shark and blood and all that, and then I swam over there,” he said at her bedside.
Willingham battered the shark until it let go of his sister.
A nearby boater spotted the commotion and sped over to the scene.
“He helped me load her in the boat, and I put the tourniquet on her,” Willingham said.
The good Samaritan then sped the pair to shore, where emergency workers tended to Bethea’s wounds before she was airlifted to a Tallahassee hospital.
“She was losing a lot of blood,” Willingham said.
Despite the challenges ahead, Bethea said she is looking forward to her surgery because afterward, she’ll be able to leave the hospital and resume her life.
“It’s going to make it a lot easier in the end,” she said. “I’m excited for it, to be honest.”
Bethea, whose bed was covered with shark stuffed animals, said she’s ready to get back into the water once she heals.
“I mean, a shark has always been there, it just happened to attack me that day,” she said. “I lived 17 years without a shark attack. I’m fine with going back.”
