A Shark attack tooth will be kept as a souvenir by an 11-year-old girl who survived one off the coast of Florida.
Riley Breihan survived a shark attack over the weekend in WinterHaven Park in Florida’s Ponce Inlet, reported WKMG-TV.
“At first I wasn’t thinking about pain, I was thinking I got bit by a shark and I have to go to the emergency room,” she said. “Then I felt the sting and it hurt real bad.”
She said she was on a boogy-board when the attack took place. When she stood up in knee-deep water, the shark then attacked her.
“It bit me with its mouth here at the same time, and sliced me again and then came at me again,” Breihan, who is in the sixth-grade, told the station.
Nearby swimmers came to her rescue before she was taken to the hospital.
Doctors said they found a baby shark’s tooth stuck in her leg.
“They had to numb me and they had to prick it out,” she said. “I don’t think i would go back in the water just because I’m going to wait.”
WTSP-10 reported that she will keep the tooth.
Over the summer, there have been a number of shark attacks, including one that left a German tourist dead in Maui.
Two weeks ago, three people were attacked by sharks in Daytona Beach, according to ABC News.
But according to ABC, shark attacks have been down since 2000. There were 51 attacks in 2000 in the U.S. alone, and there have been 37 shark attacks across the world in 2013 so far.
