Shark bites boy’s foot and then swims away
FORT LAUDERDALE –
A Canadian boy has a scary fish tale to share when he heads back home from his summer vacation: “I was bitten by a shark.”
And he’s got the stitches to show for it.
Christian Mariani, 11, was knee-deep in waters off Fort Lauderdale when he felt sharp teeth clamp down on his right foot on Wednesday about 9 a.m. The attack lasted only a few seconds, but when it was over Christian needed 17 stitches.
“I ran out screaming,” he said from a wheelchair at Broward Health Medical Center. “It was really scary. I knew something bit me. I didn’t know what it was.”
The type of shark that bit Christian remains a mystery.
But the doctor who treated the boy believes it was a small shark, based on the bite marks.
“My friend here was very lucky,” Dr. Francis Amador said.
Christian, who was discharged from the hospital Wednesday afternoon, was in the ocean near the Ritz-Carlton hotel when he was bitten, a fire-rescue official said.
Shark attacks off Florida beaches have been in the headlines in recent weeks, which experts say is in part because summer vacation happens to coincide with the annual migration of certain sharks, leading to the possibility of more encounters in our waters.
“I feel more lucky than unlucky,” Christian told reporters gathered at the hospital. “To be in the condition I am right now is also very lucky.”
Christian says he thinks the shark mistook his foot for something else.
“It’s hard to understand what’s going through their minds,” he said. “I felt it clamp down and then it let go. It was really painful.”
But Christian says he’s not going to let that keep him from going back in the ocean.
“After I heal I probably will get back in the water,” he said.
He and his family plan to return to Canada on Monday. And when he goes back to school, he will have a story to tell.