Three good Samaritans went to a beach in Pacific Grove, California, last month for some fun in the Pacific Ocean.
They ended up saving a swimmer who had been attacked by a great white shark.
Steve Bruemmer, 62, spoke about the attack in a video released by the Natividad Medical Center, according to KSBW-TV.
“It was such a beautiful day. There was no wind, the ocean was flat, there were no waves, it was so calm,” he said, recalling the idyllic moments that were soon to be shattered.
“I was about 150 yards from being done near the beach when — wham! I don’t even know exactly what happened,” he said. “Well, turns out I was bit ferociously by a shark right across my thighs and my abdomen.
“It grabbed me and pulled me up and then dove me down in the water and then, of course, it spit me out.”
Bruemmer said the shark most likely thought he was a seal until it realized something was wrong. “We’re not their food,” he said.
But the shark lingered.
“It was looking at me, right next to me. I thought it could bite me again so I pushed it with my hand and I kicked at it with my foot and it left,” he said.
“I got myself back to the surface and started yelling for help, and that’s when all my luck changed. Really unlucky that the shark bit me. They don’t want people.”
Two paddleboarders and a surfer responded to his calls for help.
“The three of them in the bloody water got me up onto the surfboard and pulled me into the beach. Heroes. How do you get in bloody water with maybe a shark circling beneath you to save a stranger? They’re amazing,” he said.
Bruemmer said two ICU nurses and a doctor who happened to be at the beach made tourniquets out of their T-shirts to stop the bleeding. “Otherwise I’d bleed to death,” he said.
Bruemmer underwent surgery in Salinas and received 28 units of blood. He was released from the hospital three weeks after the attack.
Doctors said the shark barely missed severing a major artery, according to a separate report from KSBW.
“It could’ve been much, much worse. He could’ve not made it out of the water,” said Nicholas Rottler, a trauma surgeon at the Natividad Medical Center.
