A Texas woman is speaking out for the first time since a shark bit more than 10 pounds of tissue out of her back while swimming in the waters off the Bahamas nearly a month ago.
Speaking from Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood Tuesday, Lacy Webb appeared strong despite suffering a shark bite to the back which doctors say was the size of a large pizza.
Webb and her husband, Britt Martin, from Texas, were on vacation and swimming in the waters off the Bahamas. Webb was wearing a Go-Pro camera and was capturing underwater footage of a stingray moments before the attack.
At first, the stingray is seen swimming along calmly, barely moving, then all of a sudden it speeds off. Webb says that's the moment a shark showed up, sinking its teeth into Webb's back.
Remarkably, Webb managed to swim back to her boat and pull herself up onto it before getting any help.
In her first media appearance since the attack, Webb described how she kept calm in those crucial moments.
"I knew immediately that it was a shark bite," she says. "When I surfaced, I knew that I had to very clearly communicate what was going on to get my husband out of the water. And then, I had to get my face back into the water so I could swim to the boat."
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Dr. Andrew Rosenthal, one of Webb's doctors at Memorial Regional Hospital, applauded Webb's quick actions.
"To be able to take care of herself and deal with all of this... I think maybe you would make a great trauma surgeon," Rosenthal said.
Doctors say that Webb should be well enough to return to her home in Texas by the end of the week.
