[ad_1]
Paige Winter, now 19, lost her left leg and suffered significant hand damage in the attack two years ago.
A teenage girl who lost her leg in a horror shark attack while swimming on a North Carolina beach told her dad not to be mad at the animal as she was taken to a ambulance.
Paige Winter, now 19, lost her left leg and suffered severe hand damage in the attack two years ago. She talks about her experience before the premiere of National Geographic’s “Shark Attack: The Paige Winter Story”.
Winter was visiting the beach at Fort Macon State Park in North Carolina with her family on June 2, 2019 in waist-deep water when a Bulldog Shark pulled her underwater, biting her leg .
She tried to fight it off, she said, but suffered deep lacerations to her legs, pelvis and hands in the attack and nearly lost her life.
Fortunately, Winter was saved by her father, Charlie, who punched the animal five times in the face until he let go of her leg.
She had her leg amputated above the knee and underwent several surgeries to repair her hands over the next month.
But she never blamed the shark, she said.
Winter told me she remembers lying in the ambulance being pumped up with morphine, telling her father, “Don’t be mad at the shark. He’s just a shark, he does his shark thing.
Paige Winter and her father Charlie Winter embark on a shark tagging expedition for National Geographic
Winter remembers lying in the ambulance being pumped up with morphine, telling her father, “Don’t be mad at the shark”
She was an environmentalist before the attack, she said, and as she sat in the ambulance, she recalled reading that after “Jaws” came out in 1975, “the people had competitions to kill sharks “. And I didn’t want that to happen.
“Sharks are good people,” she told I News. “They are very misunderstood.
In the years that followed, Winter became a shark advocate, working with National Geographic on shark TV shows and speaking to actor Robert Downey Jr. of his Footprint Coalition – an environmental advocacy group. , according to JD News.
Now she’s ready to tell her story and share her newfound respect for sharks in National Geographic’s “Shark Attack: The Paige Winter Story,” which airs July 12 as part of the “Shark Week” programming. .
Paige is now ready to share her story and share her newfound respect for sharks in National Geographic’s “Shark Attack: The Paige Winter Story”.
She lost her left leg in the attack and had to undergo several surgeries on both hands
Winter, right, will tell her story and share her newfound respect for sharks in “Shark Attack: The Paige Winter Story,” which airs July 12 on National Geographic.
The attack happened on June 2, 2019 while she was visiting Fort Macon State Park with her family and was in waist-deep water
In a recent Newsweek column, Winter recounts the events of the fateful day two years ago.
She wrote that she was “about to finish my first year in high school and pass all my exams.”
“I had an Ariana Grande concert coming up and I was very excited, I had just had a boyfriend and I was 17,” she recalls. “But sometimes life takes you. “
She said she was talking to her sister and her sister’s friend that morning “saying how crazy it would be if we got caught in a rip current.”
“We didn’t know something much crazier was about to happen.”
Winter said she turned around pretending to be a mermaid when she felt something cling to her foot.
At first, she had already told Good Morning America, she had assumed that it was her brother or sister who was playing a prank.
She said she realized something was wrong when she felt a “snap” sensation.
‘I’m like’ Is that, like, a snapping turtle? Like, what’s going on? ”She said in the 2019 interview.“ Then it starts. Like a dog [when] they take one rope and you grab the other rope and they start to walk with their whole body.
Paige had assumed it was her brother or sister playing a prank when she was first bitten.
Winter said in a recent interview that she told her dad not to be mad at the shark
“For a minute I was sure I was going to die, so I made my peace,” she recalls in the Newsweek column. “I remember thinking I had a great family, a great boyfriend, that I had a great race.
“But then those thoughts made me realize that I should probably get out of this situation.”
“I put my hand in the shark’s mouth and tried to pull it off my leg,” she said.
“I remember feeling all the tendons in my hand break.
“Unfortunately I remembered it was too late to hit the shark in the nose, but I was sure my dad would come and get me.
“I was right, luckily,” she said, and “when we got back to the beach I had Ariana Grande’s song ‘Breathin’ ‘in my head as I was lying on the beach. sand I knew I had to keep breathing.
Finally, she said, “I went gray, but there was no pain. I felt the static aspect of the television.
Winter was then put on a boogie board, taken from the beach and airlifted to a hospital, where she spent a month in the intensive care unit, where she ultimately had one leg amputated and suffered severe injuries. multiple arm surgeries.
A month after having a prosthetic leg, she said, she began her senior year of high school.
“The friends I already had were awesome and when I got back to school for the first time everyone was really nice to me.
“Later, a group of freshmen and sophomores made a lot of assumptions about me saying I was getting special privileges. My attitude was this: I have a disability, so what do you want me to do? “
Her father, who stayed by her side as she recovered, punched the bull shark in the face five times until he let go of her leg.
Winter, right, has since become a shark advocate and plans to study the environment after receiving his cosmetology bachelor’s degree.
She said she went back to the sea once, even after returning to the beach at Fort Macon State Park, dipping her toes in the water, but prefers to use a pool these days .
“I’m not mad at the Bulldog Shark attacking me, maybe he had a bad day too,” Winter wrote. “Sometimes I like to imagine sharks going to a big shark meeting and remembering when a guy like my dad punched them in the face.”
“I don’t think we should be mad at a shark for being in its environment and reacting to something else entering the environment,” she continued, adding that after getting her license of cosmetology and “have established a stable income”, she would like to go back to school and study the environment.
“Everything is still available to me,” she said. “It’s just a little different now. “
‘Shark Attack Investigation: The Paige Winter Story’ airs July 12 at 10 p.m. on National Geographic.
[ad_2]
Source link