19-year-old speaks after surviving shark attack in Texas

An Oklahoma teenager and her family are speaking out after the 19-year-old was attacked by a shark in Galveston, Texas last month.

Damiana Humphrey, 19, told Good Morning America she was wading in water about waist-deep when a 4- to 5-foot-long shark bit her hand.

She says she started hitting the shark until she was freed.

“When I finally saw my hand, I freaked out,” she told GMA.

Humphrey’s father Troy also spoke to GMA. “I noticed she had her hand up and her arm was bleeding,” he said.

The teenager was taken to hospital where she underwent surgery on her hand.

“I severed four tendons. And then I basically had a big hole on the back of my hand that they had to stitch up,” she said.

“The shark was looking for food for its prey. In the murky water, you only see flashes of movement. So the shark came to investigate. It was just a case of mistaken identity,” Dr. Kelsey Banks, a scientist at the Harte Research Institute, told GMA.

With summer approaching, several shark attacks have recently made headlines in the United States. Three swimmers, including two teenagers, were attacked by sharks in two separate incidents on beaches in Walton County, Florida, on Friday.

In Hawaii, a 25-year-old woman was hospitalized around 2 p.m. local time on Friday after being bitten by a shark off the north coast of Oahu, Honolulu emergency services reported.

“EMS responded to Haleiwa Small Boat Harbor where the patient was brought ashore. EMS treated her for multiple severe lacerations before transporting her to the emergency room,” the agency said.

A 46-year-old man suffered “significant” injuries when he was bitten by a shark in Southern California earlier this month, officials said.

While experts and officials advised beachgoers to take precautions such as avoiding swimming at dusk, Damiana Humphrey said the shark attack did not stop her from getting back in the water.