“You had to think about the options. The worst would be not going out there,” Cameron Whiting tells Inside Edition.
A swim team member was rescued by his teammates after being bitten by a shark outside San Diego.
“There was a blood-curdling scream,” Kevin Barrett tells Inside Edition.
Barrett was in the ocean when he heard his friend Caleb Adams screaming.
They are part of a group of friends who swim several times a week in Del Mar.
Barrett and another friend, Cameron Whiting, ran into the water to save the father of three.
"The option to not do anything was worse than the option of putting yourself at risk and going out there," Whiting tells Inside Edition.
The swimmers found Adams bleeding from his chest and hand.
“I think he was trying to kind of fight it off. He even said he had the shark’s nose in his hands and then he said he punched this thing twice,” Barrett says.
Whiting’s training as a lifeguard kicked in.
“When I saw how bad it was for the first time, I realized, ‘I don’t want him to see this.’ So I just tried to cover up with my hand so that he wouldn’t look down” Whiting says.
“Once we could tell it was a shark bite, it was so scary,” friend Alli Billmeyer says.
The swimmers brought Adams back to the shore on a surfboard and helped apply pressure to Adams’ wounds until an ambulance arrived. He was transported to the hospital.
“I’m shocked in the sense that this is a terrible accident and tragedy but I’m not surprised at how everyone stepped to,” friend Paige Hoel says.
Despite the incident that unfolded on Saturday, the swimmers have since returned to the ocean for their swim. However, they made a pact to swim closer to each other and have one person on a surfboard to keep watch for any signs of danger.
Adams’ friends said doctors told him he could go home Wednesday.
