An 8-year-old girl is recovering after a shark bite at a Texas beach over Labor Day weekend, her family said.
Harper Ochoa was in the shallow waters of Galveston on Saturday, Aug. 30, when she suddenly felt something grab the back of her leg, according to CBS affiliate KWTX.
She screamed and pushed the creature away, alerting her family nearby. After they helped her out of the water, they noticed a large chunk of flesh was missing from below her calf.
“It was just so much blood it was hard to tell what was going on,” Harper’s mom, Christa Ochoa, told 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.”
Harper received 13 staples to close the wound.
Despite what she went through, she asked if she could return to the beach the next day, according to the outlet.
The Galveston Animal Services Division and Christa Ochoa did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment on the incident.
Ocean beach during run out tide on a sunny day in Woorim, Bribie Island, Australia
A 19-year-old was similarly bitten in 2024 in the Galveston area.
Damiana Humphrey was waist-deep in the water with her siblings when a shark latched onto her hand. First responders took her to a nearby hospital, where she had surgery after the bite severed four tendons, according to KRIV.
A patrol official told the outlet in 2024 that while around 8 million people visit Galveston beaches each year, shark bites are reported only rarely.
“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 then. “It sounds like this may have been similar to that.”
