Shark attacks badly injure two teens in US

Washington

Two North Carolina kids were reported in stable condition late Sunday after losing limbs in separate shark attacks approximately two hours apart.

Oak Island Mayor Betty Wallace told the Wilmington Star-News that a 12-year-old girl lost part of her left arm and might lose her left leg, while a 16-year-old boy lost his left arm. Brain Watts, Brunswick County's emergency management director, told the paper Sunday that both victims were out of surgery. Wallace said the girl was not from the area, but was visiting family. There was no immediate information about the 16-year-old boy. 

Brunswick County Dispatchers said that they received the call at 4:12 p.m. and several agencies responded to the scene including Oak Island Police and the Air Link Helicopter. The second incident was reported at 5:30 Sunday. 

The Oak Island town manager sent an ATV to get everyone out of the water, the mayor said, adding that the Brunswick County Sheriff's office was going to send a helicopter up and down the coast to patrol.

Steve Bouser and his wife were at the beach, and just beginning a week's long vacation, when he said people began yelling, "Come in! Get out of the water! Get out of the water!"

"I saw someone carry this girl (out of the water) and people were swarming around and trying to help," he told The Associated Press Sunday evening. "It was quite terrible." 

There was a lot of blood he said and that people were trying to apply makeshift tourniquets to stop the bleeding. He added that people were asking her questions to try to keep her conscious. It was "quite nightmarish," he said.

"It was so much like a scene from Jaws," his wife Brenda added, he said.