11-Year-old boy in serious condition after Florida shark attack

Miami, Jun 8 (EFE).- An 11-year-old boy is recovering in hospital from a serious leg injury inflicted by a shark while he was playing in the ocean just a few meters (yards) from the shoreline at Cocoa Beach on Florida's east coast, local media said Monday.

The boy was with his family this weekend at the beach in Brevard County's Lori Wilson Park when a lifeguard noticed the youngster struggling wildly in water up to his waist, the online daily Florida Today reported.

"He was in waist deep waters near his mother and our lifeguards saw him in distress," Eisen Witcher of the Ocean Rescue lifeguard team told the online daily.

"There was blood in the water. A lifeguard immediately went into the water and pulled the youth back to shore. The boy had a large, bloodied laceration on his lower right calf...We wrapped it up as fast as we could," Witcher said.

Once the lifeguards bandaged the boy, whose identity was not revealed, he was taken by ambulance to Cape Canaveral Hospital, but because the injury was so severe he was flown to Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children and Women in Orlando.

Bathers were warned to stay out of the water for at least an hour as a precautionary measure.

Last April a man suffered shark bites to his torso and neck off the coast of Jupiter in Palm Beach County while underwater fishing in that area.

The state of Florida leads the nation in the number of shark attacks on its coasts (28), 54 percent of the total number recorded in the United States, according to figures of the International Shark Attack File, with Volusia County having the most with 10, followed by Broward and Palm Beach Counties