A man who survived a shark attack in the waters off the Florida Keys is recovering as a nurse who helped rescue him is speaking out.
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The incident happened around 5 p.m. Sunday near Boca Grande Key, an island west of Key West.
U.S. Coast Guard officials said the man was swimming near a recreational vessel when he suffered a shark bite to the lower leg.
A good Samaritan rescued the man, David Daniel, who was taken to Key West in stable condition.
A dispatch call from the incident detailed the response to the attack.
“Nurses on scene, they’ve applied a tourniquet. He is breathing,” a person said in the call. “We did have a call from the Coast Guard. They’ve had a very bad shark bite, arterial bleed.”
Nurse Courtney McMurray was one of the first to help Daniel.
“He looked like he was in rough shape,” she told NBC News. “He was kind of in and out of speaking to us, so I was asking him questions to try and keep him alert and awake.”
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She said he was in shock, so they moved quickly, making a tourniquet out of a belt to contain the bleeding.
“I think that he was having a difficult time kind of grasping what had just happened to him,” McMurray said. “It was a significant wound, we tried to keep it as clean as possible given the resources that we had in the first aid kit but it was more along the lines of get the bleeding to stop, that way this individual, you know, we can keep him alive.”
Daniel was brought to Jackson South in Miami to continue his recovery. He thanked those who helped save him in a statement.
“Thank you to the hero nurses on the beach and to my friends who drove me into the Coast Guard and the nurses at the hospital,” the statement read. “Said a prayer to my mom who passed away in October and I felt that she helped out.”
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