ok Little Backround: I have no notion if this story has gone over seas yet but it is a true story, and it has been all over the American News… Off the Florida coast, on the pan handle a little boy (between 8-10) was swimming in waist deep water. He was reletively close to shore when he was attacked by a shark. The shark tore his arm right off his body… ( now it gets interesting ) The little boys uncle jumped on the shark and for all intensive purposes wrestled the shark to shore where he threw it up on the beach. ( by the way the shark was about 7 feet long and 250 + pounds) Now obviously helpless the shark was promptly dispatched. The litle boy was bleeding profusely and was rushed to the hospital. The paramedics, assisted by the local rescue managed to retrieve the arm from the sharks mouth where it was not totally swallowed yet. One thing led to another and the arm was re-attached and blood flow was again established. The boy remains ( as far as I know from this am ) in critical yet stable condition. The doctors who treated him worked for 12 hours re-attaching the arm and getting him stable.
The Doctors did a fantastic job on the little boy, and I sincerely hope he pulls through, I am sure there are a lot of people praying for him.
The shark is and has been thought of as a man-eater for eons, probably because thats exactly what they have been. For millenia sharks have been feared and hunted because of their demeanor. This post is about Human heroism. The natural ability of a human to go above all odds and exert themselves to aid in the safety of another human being.
Who is the actual hero if it could be narrowed down, the uncle? the people first to arrive at the scene? the doctors? I submit is it a culmination of several people and not just one. What does this say about human behavior against a galent antagonist? Do people have some kind of untapped resource of energy/understanding/intelligence? I have studied human behavior for many years and this is a realm that is still quite lax in research and data. This would be a great case for an applied study.
If I had to pick the most heroic individual it would have to be the uncle. He literally risked life and limb to save the life of his nephew. Not only that but how in the hell did he manage to wrestle a 7 foot shark out of the water? That’s damn impressive.
My vote goes for whoever stopped the bleeding. They are, according to CNN this morning, afraid that he is severely brain-damaged from the blood loss, but they’re not sure yet(I’m hoping hard that he’ll surprise them and fully recover.) However, I find it amazing that he’s still alive at all. Someone had to act pretty damn fast to stop the bleeding, or he would have bled to death on the spot.
The uncle was the one who stopped the bleeding with a towel. Truly a hero. Actually, he was assisted with both the shark-tossing and the blood-loss reduction.
Unfortunately, the boy was without blood for some time, and the doctors said that literally all of his organs were damaged to some extent. His brain didn’t swell as bad as they expected, so they’re hoping for good recovery there.
After the surgery, the boy was able to respond to some questions by blinking his eyes, but the last I read (yesterday) he’s been unresponsive for the last few days.
Hero is such an overused term today. To be a hero you have to do something heroic. Which to me means something more then doing your job or more then an ordenary person would do in a simular circumstnaces.
The boy was attacked by a shark and is alive (but in critical condition) If he was just playing in the water then he is not a hero - but if he jumped in to rescue someone from the shark then we have one.
The uncle is a hero - if you were related to someone and they were attacked by a shark, I could see you try to sepperate the 2 and get the person to shore - but to actually wrestle the shark to the beach to save the limb - certainly above and beyond.
How big of a shark was this? If we’re talking about a sand shark (2-3 feet long), wrestling such a creature is almost laughable. If we’re talking about a great white shark (40 feet long), I would have to conclude that the boy’s uncle came from the planet Krypton.
I think you mean “for all intents and purposes.”
Unless it was a dolphin and not a shark that bit off the boy’s arm, and you meant to say “for all intensive porpoises.” <rimshot>
I nominate the shark. One lone member of a group of animals rapidly being reduced to placebos for the deluded and soup for the wealthy, striking back against the species doing its best to eradicate them. Go sharks!
I heard a discussion about excursions that take people out and let them sit on the bottom and watch sharks swimming around. Of course, they feed the sharks to keep them in the area and some experts are claiming that this is making the sharks identify people with food. They say it is just like feeding bears in Yellowstone.
Some of these excursions are so close to the shore that the participants can see the swimmers on the beach. So far Florida has done nothing about it, but are looking into it.
Anyone can be a hero, you just have to be at the right place at the right time. Im sure with enough adrenaline, anyone could wrestle a 7 foot shark. Hell, there have been people who lifted cars to save other people. No doubt the uncle is a hero, but he was just at the right place at the right time.
Calous, bitter, selfless bastard checking in here:
IANAU (Uncle), but I am involved in SAR, am a Swiftwater Rescue Technician, and I love to ride with a local fire department’s rescues. In each of these programs, the foremost priority of any rescue is your self, your team members second, and the safety of your victim is last. No way in hell I would have done what this guy had done, with or without the effects of the fear of trying to wrestle a 250lb shark. Without going so far as calling this guy a “moron”, consider what would have happened if he himself was injured. If this were a remote area and injured at all, if the help that immediately only had the resources to treat one patient and they had a severely hypovolemicly shocked small child or a seriously injured adult that had a better chance, I would have to go with treating the adult. The way it sounds, this kid was cored when he hit the ER, he very likely would have been considered a priority 0 triage patient compared to a priority 1 (the uncle if severely injured). The boy would have died.
Outside of the hypothetical situations; the uncle seems to have a serious concept of how to treat serious blood loss, had he stayed with the boy the boy might not be facing serious brain damage. Hypovolemia should always be treated before amputation.
Again, I may not have all the facts. What this guy did may have been smarter than I realize, but from the sketchy facts available from popular media, I do not tend to think that this guy is a freakin’ genius.
Gee, you mean people don’t necesarily think completely clearly in traumatic and dangerous situations? Imagine that…
What he did was -definatly- meritable. The boy would have been dead, plain and simple, if the uncle hadn’t gotten the shark off of him. And yes, he could have been seriously hurt, but that’s the POINT. He risked his own life to save the boy’s… And he’s being labeled as potentially a moron because there was the possibility that he could be hurt, and the possibility that if he were hurt, the boy might not get priority treatment (Ignoring that he would have died had the uncle not gotten the shark off him!)?? Is there really no point in doing something heroic?
I agree with K2Dave…
The uncle wasn’t doing a duty or job or anything that was expected of him, he went above and beyond what was necessary.
Heck, if I was the uncle and found myself in the position where he is now (Not before, since when you jump into the jaws of uncertainty and danger, you’re not exactly thinking things out…just reacting. Thus, it’d be easier to just say ‘it happened’ and let it go at that), I’d be thinking about a new sharkskin jacket and boots.
Aaaarrrrrgghhhhh! Damn server ate my post! :mad: Good thing I like talking about sharks, or I might have been so pissed I just left this alone.
kniz is correct that some diving operations offer shark feeding dives. However, such feedings had absolutely nothing to do with this boy being attacked. Such dives target various species of relatively harmless reef sharks. Bull sharks, such as the one that attacked this kid, are one of the most aggressive and dangerous species out there. Dive operations absolutely do not muck about with bull sharks.
I have never, ever heard of shark feeding dives taking place “so close to the shore that the participants can see the swimmers on the beach.” I cannot imagine any local government permitting that to happen, since shark-phobic beach tourists far outnumber the handful of divers who participate in shark feeding dives. If you have information to the contrary, I would love to see it.
Moreover, shark feeding dives are not offered anywhere near Pensacola. The nearest ones are in the Keys, many hundreds of miles to the south. Shark feeding dives are also offered on various Caribbean islands, particularly the Bahamas.
I personally oppose shark feeding dives because they alter the behavior of the animals and acclimate them to humans, which mostly results in putting the sharks at greater risk from us. But shark feeding dives in no way contributed to this attack.
I used to work for a large aquarium on the east coast for 6 years, and shark attacks on the east coast are not as pervelant as they are in the warmer waters down south. I have been on two cage dives and to say the least they induce quite a bit of anxiety. I do not agree with shark feeding dives in the carribian or in the keys, but I have seen feeding dives where you can see the swimers on the beach. MOst notably in the bahamas near little Inagua.
Also, I saw footage of Datona Beach, where the swimmers were swimming with in 10 meters of sharks. The camera man in the Helicopter was filming a length of beach about 3 miles long, and you can actually see the sharks right behind the waves, it is quite a sight.
As for the little boy, my understanding was that this was a pretty heavily populated place, but at the time there were not too many people in the water. I agree with most of the posts and think the Uncle is the true hero, stopping the bleeding quickly and throwing the shark on shore etc…etc…
ONE post however, by ‘threemae’ I am not sure where you are from, but where I am from everyone in triage is asessed and treated, and I don’t think there would have been any situation steming from the uncle that the child would have lost any care what-so-ever. But I am not an EMT, so I can not provide concrete evidence for this.
Assuming sharks are as smart as bears. I’m no shark expert but from what I remember reading about them they aren’t exactly the brightest bulbs in the ocean.
