Labor Day is one of the last weekends to enjoy the summer sun before fall, but the weekend turned violent with two separate shark incidents involving 8-year-olds.
In Texas, an 8-year-old girl was attacked while swimming in Galveston on August 30. The shark grabbed her by the back of the leg while she was in shallow waters. She managed to push the animal away and call for help from her family. But the damage was done. She was missing part of her lower calf.
Shark Attacks
Harper Ochoa needed the hospital and 13 staples.
"It was just so much blood it was hard to tell what was going on," Harper's mom, Christa Ochoa, told CBS affiliate KWTX. "Then when they were able to kind of get it to stop bleeding, the doctor was able to confirm that it looked like something from a shark."
Fortunately, she managed to survive without life-altering injuries.
Harper received 13 staples to close the wound. Shark attacks in the area are relatively rare. "It's really rare .... I've worked a few of them in my career and the ones I've seen were shark bites, not attacks, meaning it was a case of mistaken identity where they latched onto a human and swam away," the official said in 2024. "It sounds like this may have been similar to that."
