Victim of a shark attack in Texas who lost his calf had tried to kick it

A mother who was attacked by a shark in Texas on July 4 initially thought it was just a “big fish” – and tried to kick it away before it grabbed her and bit off her calf.

Tabatha Sullivent and her husband Cary were among four people attacked when the lone shark began stalking swimmers in the shallow waters of South Padre Island in the Gulf of Mexico last week.

A few days after her terrifying escape, Sullivent told FOX4 from her hospital bed that she was walking along a sandbar with her daughter when the massive predator suddenly lunged at them.

“I turned around and saw something dark in the water. I thought it was a big fish and wanted to kick it away. But then it grabbed me,” the mother remembers.

“I think he let go of me and I was able to swim to the beach with one leg and my arms. He didn’t grab me there. Then I got closer to the beach and people started pulling me out. My husband had me first, but then he dropped me because the shark was chasing him.”

Her husband suffered several shark bites on his leg while fending off the huge animal.

Horrifying footage captured by a witness shows the shark still creeping along the shore as passersby rushed to tie a makeshift tourniquet around Sullivent’s knee below.

You could hear her screaming in pain as the blood seeped out of her.

“My leg is pretty much gone,” Sullivent said. “They flushed it out today. It went all the way down to the bone. It didn’t go through the bone.”

“If my husband and everyone else on the beach hadn’t stepped in immediately. If there hadn’t been people pulling me out – not just to pull me out, but jumping between the shark and me – I don’t think it would have stopped,” she added.

Sullivent, who suffered the most serious injuries in the attack, can barely move her toes.

She is scheduled to undergo another operation on Tuesday, but the doctors do not yet know how mobile she will still be.

The condition of the other two swimmers who were bitten by the same shark was not immediately known.

In retrospect, officials from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Service described the attacks as “abnormal and unprecedented.”

The last shark attack in the region occurred five years ago, authorities said.