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July 6, 2001

As the light of a warm summer day was fading on the beach near Pensacola, Florida, Jessie Arbogast was frolicking in the knee-high water of the Gulf Island National Seashore. He had come to spend the day with his aunt and uncle, Diana and Vance Flosenzier of Mobile, Alabama, his siblings and his cousins.
Vance was on the beach when he heard someone yell, "Shark" and a scream. When he turned toward the water he saw a growing pool of blood near where his daughters and nephew, Jessie, were playing. Then he saw the 200-lb, 6 1/2 foot bull shark and it clamped it's massive jaws down on Jessie's arm. Vance ran into the water and grabbed the base of the shark's tail, essentially rendering it powerless. Thus began a life and death tug-of-war over Jessie.

On the second tug, the shark came free. Little did Vance know, that this meant the shark had severed Jessie's arm, approximately midway between the shoulder and elbow. In addition, a large piece of his right thigh was torn out. Jessie fell back into the arms of another swimmer, who essentially saved Jessie from drowning.

In the short time it took his rescuers to get him to shore, Jessie had lost so much blood that there was essentially none flowing from the gaping wounds. Jessie lost consciousness. His aunt, took beach towels and tied off his arm and leg and then began CPR on him.
A call to 911 brought a helicopter from Baptist Flight to the scene. When the helicopter arrived with Dr. Greg Smith and paramedic Chris Warnock, who asked about Jessie's arm. At that time, no one had any idea what had happened to it. Because saving Jessie's life was paramount, they did a "scope and run" where they did not do anything procedures on the scene, but rather scoped up Jessie and ran with him to the hospital.
With the wind the helicopter fought on the way to the beach now behind them, they arrived at Baptist Hospital in just a couple of minutes. During this time, Jessie's uncle wrestled the shark to shore, where it was shot four times by local ranger Jared Klein. A volunteer fire fighter, Tony Thomas, used an expandable baton to pry open the shark's mouth with a pair of hemostats and retrieve Jessie's arm. Wrapped in moist towels and packed in ice, the arm was taken by ambulance to the hospital.
Even as they were flying, there was grave concern for Jessie. He had no pulse and was clinically dead.

With the arrival of Jessie's arm, doctors had two very complex issues in front of them. The first was obviously the most important thing and that was saving Jessie's life. He had essentially lost most of his blood and was without a pulse for almost 30 minutes. Since it was bitten of fairly cleanly, plastic surgeon Dr. Ian Rogers had a good place to start. After over 11 hours of surgery, the doctors had successfully re-attached his arm.

At this point Jessie was alive, with his arm re-attached. However, going so long without blood, there was likely to be damage to all of his organs including his brain. Although he was alive, the doctor had no idea to the extent of the damage caused by the massive blood lost.

By the beginning of August, Jessie had improved to the point where he was focusing on the objects around him. Although still not clear the extent to which Jessie is aware of things around him, he is continues to make a steady recovery. On August 12, 2001 he was released from the hospital and returned home in an ambulance.

Jessie suffered severe brain damage as a result of this attack and loss of blood.

Read about how the boy's arm was found and reattached.

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kid , swimming , shark , horror , shark attack , bleeding to death , severed arm , little boy