11-Year-Old Eastern Iowa Boy Bitten by Shark

A Waverly family's trip to Florida to watch St. Louis Cardinals spring training games took an unexpected and frightening turn Tuesday afternoon.

11-year-old Kael Dewey and his mom, Jessica, were boogie boarding in the Atlantic Ocean at Stuart Beach, north of Palm Beach, a little after 2 p.m. Tuesday. Jessica says the two were around 15 feet from shore and started to head in. That's when she heard her son yell out.

In an interview with KWAY, Jessica says Kael screamed, "I just got bit by something really bad." Kael, remembering that he'd heard sharks are attracted by blood, quickly pulled his leg out of the water and on top of the boogie board. What Jessica saw scared her to death. She says there was "blood just running down his foot and his leg. And I was just screaming to 'Get to shore. Get to shore.'"

After making it back to shore, the Beach Patrol placed a tourniquet on Kael's leg and he was loaded into an ambulance and taken to a local hospital.

Jessica described what doctors told them at the hospital:

They said that with shark bites they leave the stitches pretty loose because there's a high chance of getting infection and they like to let it ooze out. He got about 16 stitches. They said he would have got 30 or more if it would have been a regular cut.

Kael had multiple bites on the top and bottom of his foot and his mom says the bottom of his foot "was pretty mangled up." He's now on antibiotics and pain killers.

It is believed the shark that bit Kael was a Spinner Shark that was between two and five feet long. Thank goodness it wasn't any bigger and didn't do even more damage.