Although the type of shark has not been determined, TCSO said it was about 9 feet long. “A family member jumped into the water and whacked the shark until the juvenile was freed,” TCSO said. According to a Facebook post by the teenager’s father, the girl was bitten twice and tried to “poke it in the eyes and hit it”, but the shark didn’t budge its grip. The girl’s brother, a firefighter, was with her and fought off the shark, pulling her away and into a nearby boat. Her brother also applied a tourniquet to her leg and made sure she stayed awake while she was taken back to Keaton Beach, “ultimately saving her life,” the father said. The girl was taken to Tallahassee Memorial Hospital and underwent emergency surgery, her father wrote. She suffered “unrealistic damage” to her thigh and “the nerve at the back of the thigh was severely damaged,” he said. “The doctors are not sure at this point about the condition of the leg and they want to take it day by day to see what needs to be done,” he added. The girl woke up and was able to contact her family by typing on her phone, her dad said, adding “she was in good spirits and making jokes about beating up the shark.” “The first thing he asked for was a Wendy’s frosty,” she said. “She’s been through more than I could ever imagine, but she’s a trooper. Please pray for her and the difficulty of her days. She’s not out of the woods by any means, but she’s alive and that’s what’s most important to us.” The teenager is undergoing a second surgery Saturday morning, “to possibly repair any nerve damage she can and to also clean up any dead tissue in her thigh caused by the shark attack,” her father said in an updated post on Facebook. Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare, where the girl is recovering, said in a post that Saturday’s surgery will also serve to “investigate the extent of the damage to her leg and determine what treatment options are available with the goal of saving her leg.” “Right now we are taking each issue day by day, but the long term outlook for her leg is not good,” her father wrote. “She’s a trooper, but she has an extremely long road mentally and physically ahead of her.” CNN’s Rebekah Riess contributed to this report.
