Teen who lost leg in North Carolina shark attack returns home after month in hospital
A month after a shark attack critically injured 17-year-old Paige Winter, she is back home, according to multiple media reports.
Doctors had to amputate Winter’s leg and perform multiple surgeries to repair her hands after the June 2 attack. She returned home July 3 with a celebration at the restaurant in New Bern where she worked before the accident, WTVD reports.
“I’m not going to say that it was worth it, but I am going to say that I am beyond happy and this is like almost surreal to be here with everybody again,” Winter told WCTI.
A bull shark attacked Winter as she was in waist-deep water in the ocean near Fort Macon State Park. Her father, a former Marine who is now a firefighter and paramedic, said he punched the shark to save his daughter.
“She was under water,” Charlie Winter said during a press conference last month, McClatchy reported.
“I grabbed her with my left arm and I pulled her up over the water. And when I pulled her up, a shark came up with her and it was a big shark. I immediately started to hit it. ... It could have been 10 (times), it could have been three. I don’t know, I wasn’t keeping track. But I know I was hitting it, and I hit it with everything I could and it let go,” he said.
Paige Winter has used the national attention to her ordeal to advocate for sharks. “I have a bigger platform to speak out about shark finning, which is horrible because it needs help. It needs our help. If nobody else is going to do it then I will,” she said at her homecoming, WTVD reports.
This story was originally published July 4, 2019 at 5:56 AM with the headline "Teen who lost leg in North Carolina shark attack returns home after month in hospital."
