Boy loses leg in second Florida shark attack

A 16-YEAR-OLD boy who lost a leg following the second shark attack in three days along the Florida Panhandle was in critical condition yesterday and doctors were hoping he hadn’t suffered any brain damage from the blood loss.

Craig Adam Hutto, of Lebanon, Tennessee, survived the attack on Monday but his leg was amputated.

Dr Reed Finne, a cardiovascular surgeon at Bay Medical Centre in Panama City, said yesterday Craig’s leg suffered irreparable damage to blood vessels and nerves between the hip and knee, as well as to most of the surrounding muscle.

Finne said it was too soon to tell if Craig suffered any brain damage from blood loss. In 2001, a nine-year-old Mississippi boy, Jesse Arbogast, suffered severe brain damage from blood loss when a shark tore off his arm as he swam near Pensacola.

“We’re hopeful. He’s young, he’s healthy. He should be OK, but he’s still sick,” Finne said of Hutto.

Hutto was fishing in waist-deep water about 60 feet from shore with his brother and a friend on Monday when the shark grabbed him in the right thigh, nearly severing the leg, said Capt Bobby Plair of the Gulf County Sheriff’s Office.

Three days before the attack on Hutto and about 80 miles away near Destin, 14-year-old Jamie Marie Daigle died from her injuries after her leg was mutilated by a bull shark.

The attack on Hutto was witnessed by Karen Eaker, 42, of Horn Lake, Mississippi.

“Within five seconds it was obvious there was something wrong,” Eaker said.

“We had heard the word ‘shark’ and then we saw the red water and the tug-of-war going on between the brother and the shark.”