Florida 13-Year-Old Gets 19 Stitches After Fighting Off Bull Shark During Attack Off Florida Beach

A Florida teenager fought off a shark after she was attacked in Fort Pierce, Florida.

Ella Reed, 13, was in waist-high water when she was attacked by a bull shark. She used her fists to fight the creature off.

“It just came up and bit my stomach. I knew exactly what it was but it was really, really fast.” Reed tells Inside Edition.

The shark bit the teen’s arm and leg. She managed to get back to shore where she made a video call to her mother.

“She panned down to her body and she was completely covered with blood,” the teen’s mom says.

Reed needed 19 stitches as a result of the incident. 

“Our beaches and our oceans are turning into some of the great wild oceans again,” Chris Fischer, who tracks sharks for the research organization Ocearch, tells Inside Edition.

Fischer says that it is that time of year when sharks migrate north and follow bait. Often times when they feed, they crowd against the beach, he says.

On average, humans are attacked by sharks about 16 times a year in the United States.

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