OAK ISLAND, N.C. (AP) Two
teenagers were seriously injured in two separate shark attacks in the
same North Carolina town on Sunday, terrifying beach goers and prompting
one shocked witness to compare the scene to the movie "Jaws."
Oak Island
Mayor Betty Wallace told WECT-6 (http://bit.ly/1IdIpaN) that the first
victim, a girl, lost part of her arm and could lose her left leg. Just
over an hour later, a 16-year-old boy also was attacked by a shark and
was airlifted to a hospital, Wallace said. He lost an arm.
"I saw someone carry this girl
(out of the water) and people were swarming around and trying to help,"
Steve Bouser, who was just beginning his week-long beach vacation, told
The Associated Press. "It was quite terrible."
The girl was bleeding heavily, and people applied makeshift tourniquets while asking her questions to try to keep her conscious.
It was "quite nightmarish," Bouser said.
"It
was so much like a scene from Jaws," his wife Brenda Bouser added,
referring to the 1975 thriller about a giant man-eating white shark.
Local officials sent an
all-terrain-vehicle to get everyone out of the water, and the Brunswick
County Sheriff's office was planning to have a helicopter patrol the
coastline, the mayor said.
Wallace
said Sunday evening that she had no further information on the girl's
condition. The girl is not from Oak Island but was visiting family, the
mayor said.
Brunswick County
Dispatchers said that they received the first call at 4:12 p.m., and
agencies including Oak Island Police and the Air Link Helicopter went to
the scene. The second shark attack was reported at 5:30 p.m. see more photos below;
