Missourians rush to help woman severely injured in recent Florida shark attack
SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (KY3) - When calm waters turned into chaos in the Florida panhandle, several Missourians were there to help.
For two sisters, Ashley Phillips and Alyssa Huffman, a vacation turned into a case of being at the right place at the right time.
“It could not have been a more divinely intervened team,” said Huffman, owner of Alumin8 Orthopedic.
A team of medical professionals took a vacation to Watersound Beach in Florida and after a serious shark attack, severely injuring a woman, the pros sprang into action.
“People started screaming shark, and we’re running, and she (Ashley Phillips) says I think somebody’s hurt, and so we run out of the water,” said Huffman.
At the time of the attack, Phillips and Huffman stood just feet away. Phillips works as a ed nurse for Mercy Rogers.
“I heard this one blood-curling scream, and that I was like something’s definitively wrong here,” said Huffman.
The two sisters split into teams to rescue the 45-year-old woman. According to our sister station WVUE, the woman received significant trauma to her midsection and pelvic area as well as amputation to her lower left arm. She was last listed in critical condition.
“She (Ashley Phillips) takes over the right side. We noticed that she had no hand. Everything was gone below the elbow, and I focused on providing pressure to the shoulder to stop the blood flow to that region,” said Huffman.
Keeping the woman awake and breathing became her top priority. Huffman says, “Her job, most importantly, was to stay alive because her kids were watching.”
About half a mile away, Dr. Jacob Cherry got a message from his wife: there had been an attack nearby.
“As I’m getting ready to jump in the pool, she’s like, ‘I think someone was attacked by a shark.’ and so I went, ‘what!?’ And so, I just took off sprinting. I got there I ran up the boardwalk I got through the sand I saw her so it’s probably been maybe like five or seven minutes. I saw that the towels had been covered up here and the towels had been over the arm,” said Dr. Cherry.
With not many nearby resources, the three caregivers struggled to save a life.
“We didn’t have a real tourniquet, we had a towel, but the towel, you really need something that’s thinner, because they’re pretty bulky. So you don’t know if it’s going to work. So, the problem was that there was no beachhead to get to us. So, and they couldn’t land a chopper where we were so that pool, I was at about a half a mile away was where the ambulance was at and had everyone had to run that same track that I just sprinted,” said the doctor.
It was an unforgettable moment for everyone. The three say fate put them in place to save the woman’s life.
“I’ve seen a lot of sad things in my career. The fact that she’s alive today. It’s amazing, the teamwork was amazing. You couldn’t have had a better team there. I don’t think it would’ve been the same outcome it was truly incredible,” said Phillips.
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