9-Year-Old Girl Survives Shark Attack On Vacation In Florida

A 9-year-old girl, Maggie Crum, survived a shark attack in knee-deep water in Florida. After twelve stitches she claims, she is not phased by the incident and will be returning to the water.

Maggie was playing in the water while on holiday with her family in New Smyrna Beach, Florida, when she suddenly felt a sharp pain.

She noticed a disturbance in the sand before swimming away, and that's when the shark bit down on the top half of her calf.

Breiding Crum, her mother, had reportedly seen the souvenirs around implying Volusia county was the shark-bite capital of the world. However, she thought her daughter was fooling around, up until she saw the blood.

Maggie got treated on the beach before being taken to hospital. Luckily the injuries were not life-changing.

Officials told her the shark which bit her was 3 to 4 feet long, and she needed at least a dozen stitches to cover the wound.

She is still excited to go back to school, this time with a big scar and a cool story to tell. She also got a commemorative shark bite necklace from the Kennedy Space Center for the ordeal.

Crum told media outlets she was sure that if it happened once, there was zero percent chance for it to happen again. After all, what were the odds that she would get bitten twice.

Smyrna Beach is known as the shark capital according to the international shark attack file from the University of Florida. Crum told media outlets that she was not aware of the beach’s reputation up until the time the family got there.

They did not tell the girls because they did not want to scare them from the water. Breiding said they talked about it and considered there were no sharks in the shallow water so there should have been nothing to worry about.

Crum is the tenth person to be bitten by a shark from Volusia County. Some of the previous victims, Emily Comfort, 20, and Riley Petrovich, 21 were bitten by sharks within 30 minutes of each other at the beach.

The very next month Peter Bourbeau, 51,was attacked by a shark after wading into the water.

According to Gavin Naylor, the program director for the Florida Program at the Florida Museum of Natural History, there are several factors which draw the larger sharks to the shores. These include the topography and the way the beaches are arranged, not to mention the tides.