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06/27/2006 Juliette Shipp's (Florida)

Shark Attack Survivors News Archive for Shark Attacks in 2006.
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06/27/2006 Juliette Shipp's (Florida)

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9-Year-Old Tourist Bitten By Shark
FORT PIERCE, Fla.

POSTED: 5:25 pm EDT June 27, 2006
UPDATED: 6:00 pm EDT June 27, 2006

HUTCHINSON ISLAND, Fla. -- A 9-year-old girl visiting from Pennsylvania will have quite a story to tell about her trip to Florida after she was bitten on the leg by a shark.

Police say Juliette Shipp's injuries are not considered life threatening. She was taken to a hospital for treatment of a bite wound on her right calf.

The girl, who was visiting her grandmother, was standing in the surf with a boogie board Tuesday morning on Hutchinson Island off Florida's Atlantic Coast when she was bitten. Her mother was sitting on the beach.

She told police say saw something gray in the water and it hit her, and after that the shark bit her.

Authorities flew over the coastline shortly after the attack to look for the shark and make sure there wasn't a school of sharks in the area. But the water was too murky to see anything, so authorities said they can't be certain it was a shark.

The beach remains open.

http://www.local10.com/news/9435046/det ... a&psp=news
Last edited by sharkbait on Tue Jun 27, 2006 8:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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'It was too devastating to cry'A 9-year-old Harleysville girl tells of being bitten by a shark while on a family vacation in Florida.
By Mari A. Schaefer
Inquirer Staff Writer

Ron Tarver/Inquirer
Juleitte Shipp is recovering from the nearly 200 stitches it took to close the wounds in her lower left leg.Nine-year-old Juliette Shipp was having a good time vacationing last month at her grandmother's home in Fort Pierce, Fla., until she was bitten by the shark.

Back home in Harleysville, Montgomery County, last week and recovering from the nearly 200 stitches it took to close the wounds in her lower right leg, Juliette has become a local celebrity. Television stations, newspaper reporters, and kids all want to know one thing: Did it hurt?

It did.

"It was a strong shark," Juliette said Friday. "But it didn't sink me."

Her mother, Leslie Shipp, remembered June 26 as "one of those blue-sky days." She and Juliette went to the beach to collect shells and have lunch. It was hot, and they decided to play in the ocean by her grandmother's condo on Florida's eastern coast, north of Palm Beach.

They were taking all the grandmother's precautions to avoid problems with sharks: Take off any jewelry; don't go swimming early or late in the day; watch for jumping bait fish; and no splashing on a raft.

Juliette was in the surf with a boogie board, and her mother was lounging on a large red raft.

Then, Shipp heard her daughter scream.

"I first thought she was bitten by a crab and that in a minute she'd be laughing," Shipp said. "But then she stopped screaming and looked at me with a blank stare, and then began screaming again."

At first, Juliette didn't know what was going on. She felt something tugging hard at her leg and then "stinging and burning" as the saltwater entered her wounds.

"I looked down and I saw this dark, fishy thing," Juliette said. The shark looked six or seven feet long and had a tail that waved back and forth. She limped out of the water and onto the beach.

"There was a lot of blood. It was disgusting," Juliette said, adding that she and her mother just screamed. "It was too devastating to cry."

The shark had severely bitten her leg, and Juliette could see her bone. She worried she would die or "they would have to cut off my leg."

"I had never seen anything like that before," Leslie Shipp said. "It takes a minute to register. You're in shock over what you were seeing."

Shipp didn't have much time to panic. "I just had to collect myself," she said. Her daughter grew "weak and pale and wanted to go to sleep, and that is when I got really scared."

Shipp credits strangers with helping until the ambulance arrived. One man called 911 and helped wrap her daughter's leg in a towel. Another man who saw the incident from a nearby building came to the beach and kept pressure on the wounds. A woman who worked for Disney World kept Juliette calm with stories about the park.

In the ambulance, Juliette said, she declined the pain medication because she wanted to stay conscious. She had surgery later that night to "power wash" her wounds and stitch them up. The next day, she was released from the hospital with crutches.

Juliette said the doctors told her that she was probably bitten by either a blacktip shark or a spinner shark.

"We are just looking at it like she just got so lucky," Leslie Shipp said. "They were able to sew everything back up, she is healing, and she'll have full use of her leg."

Shipp called it "a bizarre incident. But you can't tell people not to play in the surf."

Sean Van Sommeran, executive director of the Pelagic Shark Research Foundation in Santa Cruz, Calif., said shark attacks of any kind were "very uncommon." He said the attack on Juliette was probably "a case of mistaken identity" and the shark was looking for fish.

"Florida is a U.S. hot spot," said Van Sommeran, explaining that the state has twice the number of shark species as California and has smaller sharks that swim closer to shore, where people tend to play in the water.

For Juliette, who is going into fourth grade at York Avenue Elementary School, there is no love lost for sharks; she never liked them. "They creep me out," she said.

She plans on swimming only in pools from now on, or at Typhoon Lagoon in Disney World, where there are "no sea creatures in the water."


http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news ... irer_local
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Girl attacked by shark leaves hospital

By Derek Simmonsen
Fort Pierce Tribune
Posted July 2 2006


FORT PIERCE · Just days after she was apparently bitten by a shark, Juliette Shipp is out of the hospital and starting down the "long road" to recovery.

The 9-year-old Pennsylvania girl had been expected to remain in the hospital for several more days, but her condition improved enough to allow her to leave Lawnwood Regional Medical Center & Heart Institute on Wednesday night, said hospital spokeswoman Ginger King.

"It's going to be a long road," her mother Leslie Shipp said. "It's a lot of pain and she can't get around. She has to struggle with how to use crutches."

Doctors don't believe she will lose mobility in her right leg, Shipp said. Juliette, a competitive cheerleader, will likely have railroad-track scars up and down the limb for the foreseeable future.

The girl was playing in the surf with her boogie board around 11 a.m. Tuesday when she got off the board and stood in the sand. She saw a gray shape swim by and felt something bite her leg three times, her mother said.

Shipp was floating on a raft in the water not far from her daughter when Juliette was bitten. They were on a stretch of beach in front of Ocean Village on Hutchinson Island, where they had been staying with Shipp's mother.

"I never saw anything like that in my life," Shipp said. "It's hard to believe in two seconds, something can destroy your flesh so much."

The family has been to the beach many times before and took precautions to avoid sharks, she said.

The family plans to return home to Harleysville, Pa., located near Philadelphia, on Monday, she said. Medical bills are quickly piling up, and Leslie Shipp is a single mother with limited insurance.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/ ... ws-broward
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Girl, 9, attacked by shark in St. Lucie
ERIC HASERT eric.hasert@scripps.com

Paramedics wheel Juliette Shipp, 9, into Lawnwood Regional Medical Center & Heart Institute in Fort Pierce on Tuesday afternoon. The Pennsylvania girl was the victim of an apparent shark bite earlier Tuesday as she played in the surf near Ocean Village on Hutchinson Island. ERIC HASERT eric.hasert@scripps.com

"She was in the breakers playing and the mother was about 15 to 20 feet out in the water ... and the screaming just started," said Mary Praslicka, 52, an Ocean Village resident who was on the beach when Juliette apparently was bitten by a shark. "The paramedics came and took her to the hospital. She was a brave little girl, a very brave little girl."
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1882-2005 map of Florida's confirmed unprovoked shark attacks

By DEREK SIMMONSEN
derek.simmonsen@scripps.com
June 28, 2006
HUTCHINSON ISLAND — The water was still and clear as Leslie Shipp idly floated on a raft, watching as her 9-year-old daughter Juliette frolicked nearby on a boogie board in the surf.
When she heard the girl cry out, she thought a crab might have bitten her. Then she saw the wound and the blood and realized it was something much worse.


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"She screamed and she lifted her leg up and I could see the huge cut," Shipp said.
The apparent shark attack occurred about 11 a.m. on a stretch of beach in front of Ocean Village. According to police, Juliette said she saw "something gray" in the water just before it bit the calf of her right leg just below the knee.

She was taken to Lawnwood Regional Medical Center & Heart Institute, where she was in good condition Tuesday evening, according to a hospital spokeswoman. Her mother said she has a 2-inch gash on her upper calf and two longer, deeper gouges on the lower part of the calf.


'You just get scared
Shipp has seen the sheriff's office helicopter patrol the beaches in the past looking for sharks and knew about the potential danger, she said. With strong visibility and no apparent signs of the predators, she was caught off guard by what happened, she said.

"The water was so clear. We hadn't seen anything," she said.

The moments after the bite were chaotic, as Shipp tried to pull her daughter out of the water, but found she was surprisingly heavy and their movements were slower than expected.

"I think you just get scared," Shipp said.

A man she didn't know helped pick up her daughter, and the two of them grabbed beach towels to stem the flow of blood. He called 911 on his cell phone, and Shipp was able to get her daughter to the nearby recreation center.

Mary Praslicka, 52, said she came down to the beach for a morning walk when she heard the girl screaming and saw someone pick her up out of the water. While Shipp and the man applied pressure to the wound, Praslicka, who works at the Vero Beach Disney resort, tried to help calm Juliette by talking to her about Mickey Mouse and Disney World.

"She was screaming, 'Am I going to die?' " Praslicka said. "I just wanted to keep her calm until the paramedics got there."

For an active youngster who loves cheerleading, the thought of serious damage to her leg is frightening, Shipp said. Cheerleading camp is coming up soon and Juliette is worried about the attack keeping her from her participating, especially as concerns have been raised about muscle damage.

"She's just not wanting to talk about it or think about it so we're just talking about other things," Shipp said.


A grandmother's fear
Shipp came down last week from Harleysville, Pa., located outside Philadelphia, with Juliette and son George, 11, to stay with her mother Marleen Sherwin at her Ocean Village condo. Sherwin has lived at the complex since 1984 and her grandchildren have been frequent visitors.

"Every day they've gone to the beach," Sherwin said. "We've spent our whole lives at the ocean. We certainly didn't take sharks for granted."

Sherwin and her grandson were out running errands when they returned to Ocean Village and heard the news at the gate. It was the kind of experience every grandmother dreads.

"The first thing I asked was 'Does she have her arms and legs?' " Sherwin said, recalling Bethany Hamilton, the 13-year-old who lost an arm to a shark while surfing in Hawaii in 2003.

They rushed to see her at the hospital, but didn't glimpse the injury firsthand as Juliette didn't want them looking at her badly torn flesh. She was sedated in the afternoon and being prepared for an X-ray, Sherwin said. There is a possibility of surgery to close up the wound.

Her courage in spite of everything impressed her older brother.

"She's doing pretty good," George said. "She didn't really cry or anything."

The family was scheduled to leave next Monday, but Sherwin said she isn't sure how this might change those plans.

"I'm doing better," she said. "We didn't do so good earlier."


Second bite this year
This is the second apparent shark bite in the county this year. On May 4, a Port St. Lucie woman swimming about 500 to 700 yards offshore across from the St. Lucie Nuclear Power Plant was bitten by what experts said was likely a shark.

On Jan. 4, a surfer in Indian River County was bitten on the right wrist and hand by 4-foot shark about 75 yards from shore just south of Round Island Park, and a Miami man was bitten on the left foot by a 2- to 3-foot shark Nov. 21 while surfing just north of Jensen Beach Park.

Sherwin said she heard there were fishermen with lines out for sharks just south of where the attack occurred and she said she worries there might have been a connection between fishing activity and what happened. She said she plans to push for further separation between fishing areas and swim areas.

Two young men were fishing there in the early afternoon, but said they didn't arrive until after the attack occurred. They had one line dedicated to catching a shark, they said.

A sheriff's office helicopter and patrol boat combed the shoreline after the attack and a red flag was posted at the entrance to the beach. The beach has no lifeguard and only a small group of people were out by the water when it happened.

Several residents said they have spotted more sharks in the water lately, including Marie Chase, who said she sees them from her 12th floor condo at Ocean Village.

"They're always out there," she said. "You can see sharks in the morning clear as day."


Bait fish lures sharks close to shoreline
A young and hungry shark likely thought it had found a meal — and was surprised to discover otherwise — when it bit 9-year-old Juliette Shipp, said Dr. Tracey Sutton, a marine scientist at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution.

"It was probably a small shark that may have mistaken her leg for a mullet," Sutton said. "It's peak feeding time here because most bait fish are here in the summertime. Sharks follow the bait fish."

The Indian River Lagoon is a prime spot for spawning sharks — including blacktip sharks and spinner sharks — in the spring, Sutton said.

Through the summer, young sharks stay in the area hunting the schools of bait fish that tend to hang out in the surf zone. Sometimes, young sharks get caught at low tide between the beach and sandbars.

"It is highly unusual for someone to get bitten," Sutton said. "(But) if you see bait fish in the water, you want to be extra careful. ... Don't just look for sharks. Look for activity."

staff report


http://www1.tcpalm.com/tcp/local_news/a ... 62,00.html
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Post by sharkbait »

Shark attacks girl off Florida


A nine-year-old girl was apparently bitten by a shark as she played in the surf on Hutchinson Island, off the Atlantic coast of Florida. Her injuries were not considered to be life-threatening.

Juliette Shipp, of Harleysville, Pennsylvania, was taken to hospital for treatment of a bite wound on her right calf, Audria Moore, a police spokeswoman, said: “She’s going to be fine. She will need some stitches. She’s not losing her leg. It’s still intact.”



The girl, who was visiting her grandmother, was standing in the surf with a boogie board at about 11am when she was bitten, Ms Moore said. Her mother was sitting on the beach. “She said she saw something grey in the water and it hit her, and after that the shark bit her,” she added.

Ms Moore said that authorities flew over the coastline after the attack to see if they could locate a shark, but the water was too murky to see anything so they could not be certain that a shark was responsible.

The beach remained open.


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0, ... 86,00.html
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Post by sharkbait »

Girl Suffers Severe Shark Bite Off East Coast

Joan Murray
Reporting

(CBS4/AP) WEST PALM BEACH A 9-year-old girl visiting Florida’s east coast from Pennsylvania was getting stitches for deep wound from what appears to be a shark bite, causing fears she would lose her leg.

Police say Juliette Shipp's injuries are not considered life-threatening. She was taken to a hospital for treatment of a bite wound on her right calf as she played in the water is St. Lucie County. Doctors say they will be able to save her leg.

The girl, who was visiting her grandmother, was standing in the surf with a boogie board this morning on Hutchinson Island off Florida's Atlantic Coast when she was bitten. Her mother, Leslie Shipp, was sitting on the beach.

"I was on my raft, just floating in the deeper water and then she screamed," said Leslie Shipp. "She lifted her leg up and I could see the huge cut."

She told police say saw something gray in the water and it hit her, and after that the shark bit her.

Authorities flew over the coastline shortly after the attack to look for the shark and make sure there wasn't a school of sharks in the area. But the water was too murky to see anything, so authorities aren't certain it was a shark.

The beach remains open.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/localnews/ ... shark.html
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Girl Attacked By Shark While Wading In Surf

POSTED: 2:48 pm EDT June 27, 2006
UPDATED: 5:59 pm EDT June 27, 2006

FORT PIERCE, Fla. -- A 9-year-old girl was apparently bitten by a shark Tuesday as she played in the surf on a barrier island, authorities said. Her injuries were not considered life-threatening.

Juliette Shipp, of Harleysville, Pa., was transported to Lawnwood Regional Medical Center for treatment of a bite wound on her right calf, Fort Pierce police spokeswoman Audria Moore said. She was in stable condition Tuesday night, according to a nurse at the hospital.

"She's going to be fine." Moore said. "She's not losing her leg. It's still intact."

The girl, who was visiting her grandmother, was standing in the surf with a boogie board at about 11:10 a.m. on Hutchinson Island off Florida's Atlantic Coast when she was bitten, Moore said. Her mother was sitting on the beach.

"She said she saw something gray in the water and it hit her, and after that the shark bit her. She really didn't have any time to react," she said.

Moore said authorities flew over the coastline shortly after the attack "to see if they could locate the shark and make sure there wasn't a school of sharks in the area." She said the water was too murky to see anything, so authorities weren't certain it was a shark.

The beach remained open.

"Around any body of water, you must be careful because we really don't know what lurks below," Moore said.

http://www.wftv.com/news/9433823/detail ... &psp=newso
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