Gwinnett teenager bitten by shark

By Rhonda Cook

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A shark bit the left foot and leg of an 18-year-old Gwinnett County girl on a boogie board off the beach in Jacksonville, leaving the teen with 29 stitches on her foot and leg, according to the Gwinnett Daily Post.

Hannah Mayo's boyfriend pulled her to the beach and called lifeguards as the fish swam away after the attack. Mayo, a recent graduate of Brookwood High School, was treated Thursday at Baptist Medical Center in Jacksonville. Her mother, Kitty Mayo-Foster of Snellville, told the newspaper her daughter was in a great deal of pain. “The way her foot was hanging on the boogie board ... they said she should have lost (it),” Mayo-Foster said.

While local officials do not know the species of the shark, Mayo and her boyfriend, Rick Hughes, 19, said it was about 4 feet long.

Jacksonville Police spokesman Commander Gene Paul Smith said Mayo's bite was "as minor as a shark bite can be. It looked like just a clean bite and release," Smith told the Daily Post.

Smith, who has worked for the department 17 years, told the newspaper he did not recall any other shark attacks.

This was Mayo's second bad encounter with a sea creature. A Portuguese man-of-war of stung her when she was 9 while in the water off the South Carolina coast, her mother said.

“She said she’s done with the ocean,” Mayo-Foster said told the Gwinnett newspaper.