A Mississippi doctor is being hailed as a hero for coming to the rescue of a shark attack victim in the Florida panhandle.
Two shark attacks sent three people to the hospital in Walton County on Friday, according to the Walton County Sheriff’s Office. The first attack injured a 45-year-old woman, while the second injured two teenage girls.
Dr. Mohammad Ali, a radiologist with Baptist Medical Group in Jackson, and Dr. Ryan Forbess of Alabama were on the beach enjoying family vacation time when they were alerted to panic on the shore and immediately got their family out of the water.
But as soon as their children were safe, they headed back into the water to help after noticing a cloud of red in the ocean.
“When I looked down at her and saw the severity of the injury, I realized that anybody with any kind of medical knowledge needed to help,” Ali told News 5.
Ali, Forbess, and other medical professionals who were present applied tourniquets on the leg and hand of the girl with what they recognized as life-threatening injuries. Ali and Forbess explained that few of those helping knew each other but all were focused on teaming up to save the 15-year-old’s life.
“We might as well have worked with them for years,” Forbess said. “It was amazing. Kind of just it was God’s will that everyone was there to help at the same time.”
All three of the victims attacked by sharks last Friday are expected to survive.
Though beaches on the panhandle were closed following the pair of attacks that occurred just four miles apart, Walton County officials continue to remind the public that these events are extremely rare and that the attacks were atypical.
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