13-year-old girl remembers surviving shark attack in Florida

ST. LUCIE COUNTY, Fla. (WFLA) — A young girl in St. Lucie County won’t let anything get in the way of her and the sea — not even a shark attack.

Things got worse while 13-year-old Ella Reed was spending a day at the beach last Thursday afternoon. When Reed was out in the sea on North Hutchinson Island, she was bitten several times by a shark.

Reed, who is never far from the beach, said the shark passed her friend before biting her stomach, finger, arm and leg.

“It went straight to me and got my stomach first, and I was trying to block it with my arm and hand and it sort of slipped in and got my finger and arm,” Reed recalled. “It flew around and caught my leg again. Because of the adrenaline, it didn’t really hurt at first. …We were so shocked.”

After the attack, the teens got out of the water and Reed was taken home in a golf cart. When she got home, Reed told her parents what had happened. When her parents realized she wasn’t kidding, she was quickly rushed to the hospital for treatment.

“At first I seriously thought it was a prank,” said Devin Reed, Ella’s mother NBC affiliates WPTV.

As scary as a shark attack is, Reed doesn’t let that stop him from catching more waves. The 13-year-old returned to the area where she was bitten less than 24 hours after the frightening encounter.

According to the news agency, Reed believes the shark that attacked her was a bull shark at least 4 feet long.