‘Fight or flight’: Two American tourists detail terrifying shark attack in the Bahamas

Two American women are recovering after they say they were attacked by a shark while swimming in The Bahamas, according to the Royal Bahamas Police Force.

They had spontaneously jumped into the water from a boat when they felt a nudge from beneath the water about 6.30pm local time on Friday.

Then the shark turned its teeth on them.

Summer Layman, 24, and Rileigh Decker, 20, said on Tuesday that they’re grateful their injuries weren’t worse.

“It destroyed my leg basically. It severed my achilles — my artery is severed, my nerve is severed,” Decker said from her hospital bed in Melbourne, Florida.

The two girls — who had only recently become friends after meeting onboard a boat in Florida — were joining Decker’s father on his annual trip to Bimini Bay, a popular tourist destination in the western Bahamas known for its pristine beaches and fishing.

They had just arrived on the Friday and were singing and dancing on top of a boat with their friends when they said they had a spur-of-the-moment idea to jump into the water.

“It’s not something we haven’t done before,” Layman said.

Decker says they looked below and saw no sign of sharks when she jumped in but, while they were in the water, she felt a nudge on her leg.

They began swimming to the ladder and then Decker felt a tug on her leg.

“Immediately I knew that I was just bit by a shark,” she said.

“It bit and kind of released instead of biting and taking my calf with it.’

She began to scream, and the sound of her friend in distress sent Layman into a “fight or flight response”.

“I heard her screaming, so I went into panic mode for her — naturally that was just my instinct,” Layman said.

“And I looked down, and my foot was completely shredded. I didn’t even realise that I (had been bitten).”

A friend who was on the boat immediately began to help the two out of the water. Both women say things could have been much worse if he hadn’t acted so quickly.

As they waited for medical personnel to arrive, they made a makeshift tourniquet out of rope from a nearby boat to stem the bleeding from Decker’s leg.

Both women were driven in a golf cart to a clinic on the island where they began treatment.

Decker, whose injuries were more severe, was flown to The Bahamas capital Nassau for care. They both eventually flew back to Florida, where more extensive medical care was available, they said.

The women said they endured much of the journey without painkillers.

Layman, who is now out of hospital, showed off the new pink cast on her foot. She received 48 stitches and is awaiting a possible skin graft.

Decker has had two surgeries so far and is waiting to be transferred to a hospital in Orlando for additional surgeries to repair the nerve and artery in her leg.

“I’m just very grateful to be here still and even have my leg,” Decker said.

“We have our limbs, and we’re here to tell the story, so we’re really grateful,” Layman added.

CNN has reached out to the Royal Bahamas Police Force for comment.

Unprovoked shark attacks are rare in the Bahamas, with just 34 recorded since 1580, according to the Florida Museum’s International Shark Attack File.

This ranks the Caribbean country ninth among countries which track shark attack data — the US has had the most with 1,640 cases, followed by Australia with 706 and South Africa with 262, the data shows.

Last week’s incident is at least the third reported shark attack involving American tourists in the Bahamas since 2023.

In January 2024, a 10-year-old boy from Maryland was bitten while participating in a shark tank expedition at a resort on Paradise Island, the police said.

In December 2023, a 44-year-old woman from Boston was fatally attacked by a shark while paddle boarding near a beach resort.