Scuba Diver Recalls Losing Arm in Shark Attack While on Vacation
An American tourist recalled to Fox News Digital the harrowing 2017 shark attack which left her without an arm.
Tiffany Johnson was on a snorkeling expedition with her husband just off of Paradise Island when she felt “something” bump into her underwater. "When I turned to my right to see what I had bumped into, I was face to face with a shark," the North Carolina resident recalled. "The bump I felt was when it had literally grabbed onto my arm, so my arm was in his mouth.”
Johnson recalled that her first instinct was to surrender to the shark. "I felt my body release, like giving up," she said, before being imbued with a "sudden strength" that allowed her to fight back.
"I remember thinking, ‘No, you’re not going to take my life,'" Johnson said. "That's when it was on for him. The shark began to fight and thrash. I'm screaming through my snorkel, but you really can't utter words. You've got the snorkel tube in your mouth."
She managed to free herself from the shark’s grasp, but not before the beast had “completely severed” her arm, leaving her with “a mangled stump.”
“I yanked his jaws open,” Johnson recalled, “and my arm kind of just flies out, and I look down, and it's gone."
Johnson doesn’t remember all of the attack’s aftermath, so relies on her husband’s recollection. "He said he turned and saw me. I had started to swim back, and I had put my injured arm up out of the water," Johnson said. "It was literally spewing blood everywhere. And that was the sight he saw, and I remember locking eyes with him. The terror on his face was something I've never seen before.”
At that time, no one was aware of where the shark was, but Johnson’s husband jumped into the water to rescue her. The victim said she was “laser focused” on getting back to the boat but felt that the shark “was right behind me.”
"I was praying the whole time, ‘God get me to that boat,’" Johnson said. "My husband met me in the water. I had made it most of the way on my own, and he took me the last 10 feet or so."
Johnson was immediately taken to a hospital on Paradise Island where she was treated for her grave injuries.
After her recovery, Johnson quickly went on another scuba diving trip to Aruba, determined not to let her harrowing experience cloud her love of the outdoors. She now works to help other shark attack victims.
"I believe wholeheartedly God miraculously saved me," she said. "Every time I tell that to anybody (what happened in the hospital in the Bahamas) with any kind of medical knowledge, they're speechless.
"They're like, ‘Tiffany, I don’t know how you're alive. You're a living, walking miracle. Science can't explain you. You know you don't make sense.'"