Addison Bethea, 18, had her leg torn off by a 10-foot shark in the shallows as she went diving for scallops – and a year later, the brave teen returned for a dip in the exact same spot
A teen diver who had her leg ripped off by a giant shark returned for a dip in the exact same spot a year after her horrific injury.
Addison Bethea, 18, from Perry, Florida was no stranger to the shallow waters near Keaton Beach as she went diving on the afternoon of June 29, 2022.
The sun shone as the cheerleader scavenged for scallops with her brother, Rhett Willingham, 24, and his pals.
But as they began teasing one other about the sea creatures that may be lurking in the water, Addison felt something yanking at her calf.
She was sure Rhett was playing a prank on her until she touched the sandpaper-like skin of a giant 10ft bull shark as it sank its “razor-sharp” teeth into her right leg.
Addison screamed for her brother as the beast pulled her under, leaving nothing but a pool of her own blood at the surface.
“And then I came back up, and that’s when I saw everything happening all at once: the shark’s tail thrashing, the blood. It was a lot,” she told The Guardian.
Despite the shark gnawing at her thigh, the teen thumped it on the nose in a bid to scare it away.
Addison slipped free from its grasp, only for it to continue its ferocious attack moments later. She even lost part of her finger trying to pry its jaws from her body.
“Its eyeball was the size of a baseball: very big, very gooey, very gross. I remember even in the moment being, like, eww,” she added.
Beachgoers heard the wails from shore as a skipper quickly hopped on his boat to save the injured girl.
Rhett, a trained firefighter, managed to help haul his sister onto the boat and fashioned a makeshift tourniquet to slow down the bleeding.
By the time Addison was onboard, struggling to remain conscious, she looked down in horror to find that her “entire thigh was gone”.
Surgeons at Tallahᴀssee Memorial Hospital tried everything to save her limb – but six days later, her right leg was amputated above the knee.
With pure grit and determination, within a day of the operation she miraculously travelled 10 feet with the ᴀssistance of a walking frame.
Fast forward 12 months and Addison was back swimming in the same spot where she had her horror accident.
Scalloping and surfing are too big a part of her life to give up, and she said it’s certainly not something she’s going to avoid.
And Addison feels no qualms over the incident and realises there’s a risk when entering a shark’s domain.
“What you have to realise is that once you get into the ocean, that is not your territory. The shark was following its instincts. Yeah, it sucks that it picked me to bite – but it happens,” she said.