NEW SMYRNA BEACH, Fla. (WSVN) — A young swimmer, who survived a shark attack off the coast of Florida, is sharing his story of the moment he came face-to-face with the shark.
Twenty-one-year-old Connor Baker said he was tossing a ball around in the water like he had been doing all week long, when he felt something in his foot.
“It felt like my foot was getting like stabbed and sliced at the same time, at the top and bottom,” said Baker. “Even though it hurt bad, and I saw the initial gash, I didn’t think it was that bad.”
Baker said he was spending his Fourth of July holiday in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. He was throwing the ball to his girlfriend’s brother when the attack occurred.
“Maybe made two or three passes, that was it, not even been in the water for five minutes, and I kinda jumped to catch one,” said Baker. “All of a sudden, I felt like something like stabbed the top and bottom of my foot.”
He rushed out of the water where he was met by his friend and his girlfriend, who is a nurse.
“Yeah, I’m a nurse but I’ve never seen anything like that before,” said Haley Moore, Baker’s girlfriend.
Baker explained how his girlfriend jumped into action to help his bleeding leg.
“She started putting pressure on it with a towel, like on my leg to stop the bleeding,” said Baker.
A nearby swimmer, an Emergency Medical Technician who was on vacation, came to Baker’s aid as Moore flagged down a local sheriff who put a tourniquet around Baker’s leg.
“The lady came screaming in, ‘We need help, I need help,’ and the man was kinda limping in fell in kinda the shallow part of the water, and next thing you know paramedics were coming up to him. You could tell he was in pain. You could see the blood coming off of the sand,” said witness John Grindle.
At the hospital, doctors initially thought Baker only had one tendon ruptured by the shark bite.
“He said it would be an hour surgery. Turned out to be a four-hour surgery because I had three more tendons ruptured,” said Baker.
Officials said Baker is lucky that the shark missed a nerve in his foot.
While it will take about six to seven weeks until Baker can apply pressure on his foot and move it, he is expected to walk again after he’s healed.
“The nerve, not getting hit, was such a blessing for us because that could have affected me walking probably permanently,” said Baker.
New Smyrna Beach is known as the shark bite capital of the world.
Copyright 2024 Sunbeam Television Corp. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.