The incident took place at Jones Beach in Long Island, New York (pictured). Photo: Wikimedia Commons
A swimmer at a New York beach was bitten by a shark over the Fourth of July weekend. The run-in was one of several shark sightings in the New York area last week, amidst holiday festivities.
The incident occurred Friday at Jones Beach State Park Field 6 in New York. As ABC 7 reports, it was a particularly busy day at the beach, with 100,000 people in attendance to watch Navy’s Blue Angels practice for their July 4th performance.
According to lifeguards, the man was bitten in the left foot, receiving a slash that went all the way to the bone. “He came running over to our lifeguard stand … his foot was bleeding and he was saying, ‘I got bit, I got bit! I don’t want to look’,” lifeguard Kate Maio told the New York Post. “The man who got bit said that it felt like a jaw-biting motion and that it went clean through.”
Emergency medical services treated him at the scene, before he was taken to Nassau University Medical Center with non-life-threatening injuries. Soon after, authorities suspended swimming, then searched the areas for sharks or other dangerous wildlife. Once the area was deemed safe, swimmers were allowed back in the waters.
However, this was not the only shark sighting in the area. Earlier that morning, around 10:30 a.m., a shark was seen at Rockaway Beach in Queens, causing swimming to be suspended for an hour. Just a day earlier, at least three sharks were spotted at the same beach.
