A teenager was attacked and bloodied in the water during a tropical birthday vacation. In early July, Claire Macdonel, a 13-year-old from Texas, was playing along the coast in Turks and Caicos when she was suddenly bitten multiple times by a hungry animal. Within seconds, she could see blood running down her arm as her mother raced to her aid.
13-year-old believes her jewelry caused the attack
While doing a handstand in shallow water, Macdonel immediately felt that something was wrong.
“I did the handstand, like four or five feet deep,” she recalled to KHOU 11, “and when I did, midway, I just felt a lot of pressure.”
A barracuda had latched onto her hand and arm, gnashing its teeth in a series of bites within a matter of seconds. The teenager believes that the predatory saltwater fish mistook her for prey because she was wearing shiny jewelry, which might have looked like scales.
“I just looked up from my hand, and I just saw blood everywhere. It was running through my whole arm, and it was just like a horror movie,” the girl said.
Her mother, Jen Macdonel, who witnessed the attack while in the water with her brought her to the shore as quickly as possible.
A bystander who said she was a nurse helped to dress her multiple wounds, making a tourniquet and stopping the bleeding, as they waited for an ambulance to bring her to an emergency room. There, doctors placed a loose suture over the lacerations and put her arm in a cast.
Despite the bloody encounter, the teenager was still able to celebrate the rest of the vacation and didn’t change her attitude about animals, in part because she still aspires to be a marine biologist. Her mother says that she even named the barracuda “Suzie.”
“Just because one bite happened, it doesn’t change that I love animals and want to study them,” Claire said. “Even though something bad happened, you’ve got to keep going with your dreams.”
