CNN
By Hanna Park, Lauren Mascarenhas and Sara Smart, CNN
(CNN) — Two American women are recovering after they say they were attacked by a shark while swimming in The Bahamas.
The reported attack occurred on Friday around 6:30 p.m. in the waters of Bimini Bay, where authorities are investigating, according to the Royal Bahamas Police Force.
Summer Layman, 24, and Rileigh Decker, 20, told CNN on Tuesday that they’re grateful their injuries weren’t worse, but are still recovering from the incident.
“It destroyed my leg basically. It severed my Achilles. My artery is severed, my nerve is severed,” Decker told CNN from her hospital bed in Melbourne, Florida.
She said she and Layman decided to join her dad’s annual trip to Bimini Bay, a popular tourist destination in the western Bahamas renowned for its pristine beaches and fishing.
When they arrived on Friday, they were singing and dancing on top of a boat with their friends when they said they had a spur-of-the-moment idea to jump into the water.
“It’s not something we haven’t done before,” Layman said. In fact, the two explained that they met and became friends on a boat in Florida.
Decker says they looked below and saw no sign of sharks when she jumped in, but while they were in the water, she felt a nudge on her leg.
As they began swimming to the ladder on the dock, Decker felt something tug at her leg. “Immediately I knew that I was just bit by a shark,” she said.
Their friend, Austin, was there and immediately began to help the two of them out of the water. Both women say things could have been much worse if he hadn’t acted so quickly.
“It bit and kind of released instead of biting and taking my calf with it,” Decker shared.
As they waited for medical personnel to arrive, they made a makeshift tourniquet out of rope that was on a nearby boat to put on Decker’s leg.
“I heard her screaming so I went into panic mode for her, naturally that was just my instinct,” Layman said. “And I looked down and my foot was completely shredded. I didn’t even realize that I was bit. I was just in fight or flight.”
Both women were driven to a clinic on the island on a golf cart, where they began treatment. Decker, whose injuries were more severe, was flown to Nassau for care. They both eventually flew back to Florida, where more extensive medical care was available, they said.
The women said they endured much of the journey without painkillers.
Layman, who is out of the hospital, showed off the new pink cast on her foot. She received 48 stitches and is awaiting a possible skin graft.
Decker has had two surgeries so far and is waiting to be transferred to a hospital in Orlando for additional surgeries to repair the nerve and artery in her leg.
“I’m just very grateful to be here still and even have my leg,” Decker said, noting that many people who get bit by sharks aren’t lucky enough to make it out of the water.
“We have our limbs and we’re here to tell the story, so we’re really grateful,” Layman added. “The chances are very slim, however; it happened to us.”
CNN has reached out to the Royal Bahamas Police Force for comment.
Unprovoked shark attacks are rare in the Bahamas, with just 34 recorded since 1580, according to the Florida Museum’s International Shark Attack File. This ranks the Caribbean country ninth among all tracked countries, with the US leading at 1,640 cases, followed by Australia with 706 and South Africa with 262, the data shows.
However, last week’s incident is at least the third reported shark attack involving American tourists in the Bahamas since 2023.
In January 2024, a 10-year-old boy from Maryland was bitten while participating in a shark tank expedition at a resort on Paradise Island, the police said. In December 2023, a 44-year-old woman from Boston was fatally attacked by a shark while paddleboarding near a beach resort.
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