Annabelle Carlson, Aspen, Colorado, 15 year old teen girl loses her right leg during diving trip in Belize in what authorities described as very rare attack.
A 15 year old Colorado teen girl lost her leg in a shark attack while vacationing in Belize this week.
Annabelle Carlson, 15, was on a diving trip to the Lighthouse Reef near Half Moon Caye, some 50 miles southeast of Belize City with a tour group when the attack occurred Tuesday morning, the Aspen Daily News reported.
Carlson, of Aspen, had taken off her diving equipment and went back into the water for a post-excursion swim when she was suddenly bitten.
Rare Belize shark attack
‘Annabelle was able to fight off the attack as best as she could but was critically injured in the fight,’ a GoFundMe page set up for the teen’s family stated.
‘Annabelle 1, shark 0.’
The tour operators with Belize Dive Pro rescued Carlson and immediately brought her to a Coast Guard base, where officials helped stabilize her, Adm. Elton Bennett of the Belize Coast Guard told ABC News.
Photos from the incident showed a team of people carrying the teen to safety once they got back on land.
‘It was her right leg that received a bite from the shark. So, she lost her right leg,’ Bennett explained.
It is thought the American girl was bitten by a reef shark approximately 6 feet long.
After she was stabilized at a hospital in Belize City, Carlson was airlifted to a trauma center in the US, the GoFundMe stated.
The shark attack was the first in recent memory in Belize, Channel 5 Belize reported.
Long road to recovery
‘We’re very saddened about it, but I want to highlight that this is something that is very rare and I don’t think this is a time to say, well, you know, we don’t want to go swimming again or something,’ Belize’s Minister of the Blue Economy told the outlet.
Carlson, a sophomore at Aspen High School, ‘will have a very long road of recovery ahead of her,’ the family’s fundraiser page said.
As of Friday afternoon, the GoFundMe had raised just on $114K of its $250,000 goal.
