“I hit the shark three times. I guess the third time he came back and his tail hit me in the chest,” said Zack Gallo, who was attacked.
A lifeguard at Long Islandin New York state, was playing the victim in a training exercise at sea when he was suddenly attacked by a shark.
The shark bit the lifeguard on the chest Zack Gallo, while he also has injuries on his right hand. The shark was 4 to 5 meters long, according to the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office. Steve Bellone.
“He was playing the victim role and in the midst of it, he actually became a victim when that shark bite happenedBellone said at a press conference.
“I felt a sharp, sharp pain and I knew it was some kind of … as soon as I felt the elastic texture, I knew it was some kind of shark“, said the lifeguard.
The lifeguard said he wrestled with him shark “hitting him.” “I hit the shark three times. I guess the third time he came back and his tail hit me in the chest».
Other lifeguards, who were already in the water for the exercise, rushed to help Gallo, who was bleeding, but the victim miraculously made it out of the water unaided, the officer said.
The beach was closed after the attack. Bellone says authorities later took out a drone to monitor the water and saw a shark, but “we don’t know if he was a shark himself or not».
A second beach east of Smith Point, Cupsogue, was also closed Sunday.due to dangerous maritime activity,” county parks officials said.
Three days earlier, a swimmer suffered a “possible shark bite” at nearby Jones Beach in Nassau County, prompting county police there to increase beach patrols ahead of the July 4 holiday weekend.
Shark attacks on Long Island “are extremely rare,” county officials said, but have increased in frequency recently. More sharks have been sighted in the past two years than in the entire previous decade combined.
View the news feed and get the latest news.
