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Man saves friend from shark attack by punching it repeatedly

Man saves friend from shark attack by punching it repeatedly

[network video]

Last Friday morning, Hawaiian surfer McKenzie Clark, 34, was paddling her surfboard in murky waters in the Big Island’s Keawaeli Bay when a large tiger shark attacked.

“I looked over and saw her being lifted out of the water by a large shark — I saw the dorsal fin and I saw the tail, kicking really hard, and she was screaming — I could tell right away it was a large shark,” Clark’s friend, Brian Wargo, recalled.

Wargo described the shark as being between 12 and 15 feet long.

"I was just scared. I didn’t know what to do. The first time it bumped me I thought, ‘What’s happening? Did I hit a rock?’ I was kind of in disbelief. It just happened so fast," Clark told Hawaii News Now.

Wargo witnessed the attack and immediately paddled out to her, expecting the shark to be gone by the time he reached Clark.

Instead, the shark had latched onto Clark’s hand and board. When Clark freed her hand and rolled off her board, the shark started towing her by the leash that attached her ankle to the board.

When Wargo reached Clark and the shark, he did all that he could do: He punched the shark.

“She was attached to the board and the shark was pulling her under the water,” Wargo told the Associated Press.

“She couldn’t get the leash off her foot. I saw the shark coming at her again, I grabbed the dorsal of the shark. I started kicking at the shark and using my board — I started punching the shark. I felt like I was going to break my hand — but the shark shuddered, and then headed out to sea.”

Wargo drove Clark, who wrapped her bleeding hand in a wetsuit and towel, 25 miles to the hospital.

"I called 911 and let them know we had a shark bite victim," Wargo told ABC News. “She was in shock, but she was tough about the whole thing and handled it like a champ.”

Clark survived the attacked with injuries to her hand and fingers. She received over 50 stitches to her hand and was released from North Hawaii Community Hospital the same afternoon. Her ring finger will required a skin graft.

Clark is raising money to cover her medical expenses here.

“It was very terrifying but I am very grateful all went the way it did,” Clark told West Hawaii Today.

“To get attacked by a shark this size and only get a couple of finger bitten, I feel really lucky,” she added.

“There is no question what its intent was,” Wargo said. “I’m a fisherman and I’ve dealt with big animals … Its intent was to eat my friend right in front of me and I wasn’t going to let that happen.”

The Department of Land and Natural Resources closed the beach following the attack, the Associated Press reported.

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