Shark attack survivor: Fish was 'biting up my left arm'

Source: AP

A teen seriously wounded after a shark attack in North Carolina says he felt the big fish before he saw it and didn't realize what it was until it was "biting up my left arm."

"We were just playing around in the waves, and I felt a hit on my left calf," 16-year-old Hunter Treschl said in a videotaped interview released Tuesday night by the hospital where he is being treated. "I thought it felt like a big fish, and I started moving away. And then the shark bit my arm — off."

Treschl said he was able to make it on to the beach in Oak Island, North Carolina, with the help of a cousin who had been in the water with him. He said one of the people who ran to his aid had a belt with him that he used as a tourniquet to stop the bleeding, while others "were all helping me kind of stay calm until the ambulance got there."

Asked if he ever saw the shark, Treschl said he first felt it hit his left leg before it hit his arm.

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In this image taken from video provided by New Hanover Regional Medical Center, 16-year-old Hunter Treschl, of Colorado Springs, Colo., speaks during an interview at New Hanover Regional Medical Center in Wilmington, N.C., Tuesday, June 16, 2015. The teen was seriously wounded in a shark attack. "We were just playing around in the waves, and I felt a hit on my left calf," Treschl said in a videotaped interview released Tuesday night by the hospital where he is being treated. "I thought it felt like a big fish, and I started moving away. And then the shark bit my arm _ off." (New Hanover Regional Medical Center via AP)



Emergency responders assist a teenage girl at the scene of a shark attack in Oak Island, N.C., Sunday, June 14, 2015. Mayor Betty Wallace of Oak Island, a seaside town bordered to the south by the Atlantic Ocean, said that hours after the teenage girl suffered severe injuries in a shark attack Sunday a teenage boy was also severely injured. (Steve Bouser/The Pilot, Southern Pines, N.C. via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

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