The Ochoa family was on vacation in Galveston, Texas this past weekend when the unthinkable happened: A shark bit the leg of their 8-year-old girl named Harper. Harper’s mother, in an interview with KWTX News, says her family from central Texas has taken the trip to the beaches of Galveston several times before, but none of them has been as eventful as this one.
Videos by Outdoors
[RELATED: Scientists Explain the Rare Orange Shark That Went Viral]
Harper was wading in the ocean when suddenly she felt something grab her leg. It was bleeding profusely, and it took a while before they realized what had really happened. Doctors said the girl’s injury (a chunk out of her lower leg) was consistent with a shark bite.
Although doctors fixed up Harper’s leg with over a dozen staples and sent her home, she is now back in the hospital due to an infection. No one saw the animal that bit the young girl’s leg, but it could have been a bull shark, a blacktip shark, or an Atlantic sharpnose shark, which are some of the most common sharks off the coast of Texas.
See an interview with the mom of the young girl who was bitten by a shark in Texas here:
Header stock image by Stephen Frink/Getty Images
