‘It was just so much blood’: 8-year-old injured after shark bites chunk out of leg

GALVESTON, Texas (KWTX/Gray News) - An 8-year-old girl in Texas is in the hospital for a second time after she was bitten by a shark over the weekend, according to her family.

Doctors said they will keep Harper Ochoa in the hospital for a few days as she is administered antibiotics.

Harper’s mother, Christa Ochoa, said her daughter is going well considering her ordeal.

Harper and her mother were on a family vacation in Galveston when the girl was bitten.

Ochoa said the family has gone on the trip many times before.

On Saturday, the family spent most of the day at the beach. That afternoon, Harper said she felt something grab the back of her leg while she was playing in the water.

Ochoa said her daughter pushed the thing off her and began screaming to family members nearby.

When the family pulled Harper out of the water, they said they noticed a big chunk of flesh missing from the back of her leg, just below her calf.

“At first we thought, you know, was it a stingray?” Ochoa said. “It was just so much blood it was hard to tell what was going on. 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, and she got 13 staples in the back of her leg.”

Ochoa said she was told by doctors they don’t anticipate there to be any long term damage and that they expect Harper to make a quick recovery once her infection is treated.

When the doctors give her the green light, Harper said she is ready to get back to the beach as soon as she can.