A shark attack victim is reflecting on the moment that her life changed. In 2017, a North Carolina woman lost her arm after the animal attacked her while snorkeling in the Bahamas.
She was swimming near a reef when the shark ran into her. Thus, began her moment of terror. "When I turned to my right to see what I had bumped into, I was face to face with a shark," North Carolina resident Tiffany Johnson told Fox News Digital."The bump I felt was when it had literally grabbed onto my arm, so my arm was in his mouth."
At the moment, she said she felt like giving up. However, she ultimately fought back, but she ended up losing her arm in the mouth of the fish. She said her immediate reaction was one of terror and defeat.
"I remember thinking, 'No, you're not going to take my life,'" Johnson said of trying to free herself. "The shark began to fight and thrash. I'm screaming through my snorkel, but you really can't utter words. You've got the snorkel tube in your mouth." No one on the boat was aware of the shark.
"One of the times, I yanked his jaws open, and my arm kind of just flies out, and I look down, and it's gone," she said. The attack left her with only her upper arm. She had went swimming on a cruise expedition. Surfacing, she flagged down her husband, who came to help, but immediately recoiled in terror.
Shark Attack Victim Survives
"He said he turned and saw me. I had started to swim back, and I had put my injured arm up out of the water," Johnson said. "It was literally spewing blood everywhere. And that was the sight he saw, and I remember locking eyes with him. The terror on his face was something I've never seen before, and he just screamed out, 'Baby,' and jumped in the water as I'm trying to get to that boat."
She swam for the boat with the shark on her trail. "I was praying the whole time, 'God get me to that boat,'" Johnson said. "My husband met me in the water. I had made it most of the way on my own, and he took me the last 10 feet or so."
Fortunately, she managed to get to safety.
"Every time I talk about it, I get emotional because it's like, I can't even put it into words fully. All I can say is, it felt like a thick, tangible cloud of peace. I believe wholeheartedly God miraculously saved me," she said. "Every time I tell that to anybody (what happened in the hospital in the Bahamas) with any kind of medical knowledge, they're speechless. They're like, 'Tiffany, I don't know how you're alive. You're a living, walking miracle. Science can't explain you. You know you don't make sense.'"
