Shocking video shows the moment a marine biology student emerges screaming from the water after losing a leg in a shark attack.
Matteo Mariotti, a 20-year-old Italian studying in Australia, posted harrowing images on Friday showing him struggling to reach the surface as a shark tries to pull him underwater on a remote beach off the coast of Queensland.
After a long struggle, he emerges screaming for help as he desperately tries to reach a friend on the shore.
That friend, Tommaso Agosti, finally reaches him and pulls him out, while a cloud of blood covers much of the water.
Agosti then screams for help as he tries to calm his friend’s breathing and stop the bleeding.
After yelling for a belt, Agosti made a makeshift tourniquet and “carried me on his shoulder” to where a scale met them, Mariotti wrote in an Instagram story.
However, they were unable to save one of the student’s legs, which was amputated below the knee, according to an online fundraising event he linked to.
Matteo Mariotti, 20, captured the moments after being bitten by a shark on film. Instagram/Matteo Mariotti
Still, “I never thought I would survive that monster,” he wrote of the shark attack, assuming he would have to “say goodbye.”
“Tommaso saved my life,” he said of his friend.
He also attributes his miraculous survival to his late grandfather, who died just a day before the attack.
When a friend pulled him ashore in Queensland on Friday, a pool of blood could be seen rising into the water. Instagram/Matteo Mariotti
“I no longer have a leg, but I am alive, my grandfather protected me,” Mariotti told L’Unione Sarda from his hospital bed.
Mariotti was taking a temporary break from studying at the beach to find solace amidst grief for his grandfather on Friday afternoon when he decided to go swimming.
He said he brought a small camera to film the fish, “but after a few steps in the water, I felt a terrible sting in my foot.”
Mariotti’s friend Tommaso agosti reached out and dragged him to the rocky shore. Instagram/Matteo Mariotti
Soon, pain ran through his entire leg.
“The shark began to drag me out to sea, until at one point I managed to grab its head with my hands,” Mariotti said.
“I made an effort to widen that big mouth and freed my leg, although I understood that from the knee down there was nothing left.”
Mariotti was rushed to a hospital, where his leg had to be amputated. Instagram/Matteo Mariotti
Then he headed to the shore.
“I was screaming, afraid that the shark would reach me, I was screaming for help from my friend Tommaso, who was on the beach.”
A GoFundMe raised more than $40,000 in just one day.
“Matteo will need support and very expensive medical care to return to living his best life in his 20s, and we are determined to do everything we can to help him,” the organizers wrote.
Categories: Trending
Source: vtt.edu.vn