Teen who lost arm to shark didn’t see it until attack

A 16-year-old who lost his arm this week in one of two back-to-back shark attacks in North Carolina said the encounter came without warning and he first saw the predator when its teeth were cutting into his skin.

Hunter Treschl was playing with a cousin on Sunday in waist-deep water off Oak Island, North Carolina, when what felt like a big fish hit his left leg, twice. Then it attached to his arm.

“The first I saw it was when it was biting up my left arm,” the teenager from Colorado said in a video posted online by New Hanover Regional Medical Center, where he has been recovering.

“It got that off, eventually,” he added. He was one of two youths seriously injured in the dual shark attacks, which occurred about an hour apart. A 12-year-old girl lost part of her left arm and suffered serious leg injuries.

Kiersten Yow is in stable condition at another hospital, her parents said in a statement on Tuesday. The North Carolina girl “has a long road to recovery that will include surgeries and rehabilitation,” but she is expected to keep her leg, according to her parents, Brian and Laurie Yow.

The back-to-back attacks occurred at the start of the summer tourism season in Oak Island, where officials now are seeking to ban beachside shark fishing through the July 4 holiday weekend, according to the StarNews newspaper.

Dual shark attacks in such close proximity are extremely rare, said George Burgess, director of the International Shark Attack File database maintained at the University of Florida.