Turks and Caicos– A 22-year-old Connecticut woman has lost her foot after it was bitten off by a shark while she was snorkeling in Turks and Caicos.
The incident occurred around 3:00 p.m. on Wednesday during a private ocean tour along Grace Bay Beach at the Bone Yard dive site.
‘The extremely rare and unfortunate incident that happened yesterday outside the reef, involving a snorkeler and a shark, occurred during a private trip,’ a spokesman for the dive company, Big Blue Collective said.
After the attack occurred, the captain of the boat dove into the water to rescue the woman and contacted an ambulance to transport her to Cheshire Hall Medical Centre.
The Capitan then went back for the woman’s foot and managed to find it still in the flipper before immediately putting it on ice and transporting it to the hospital.
The woman and her foot were then transported to Miami.
According to the report, medical staff in Miami were not able to reattach the woman’s foot because it took six hours for an emergency aircraft to pick up the woman from the Cheshire Hall Medical Centre.
Officials say the woman was celebrating her graduation from Yale University with her friend and were staying at a holiday home her parents owned.
Authorities believe the woman was attacked by a Caribbean Reef Shark in a case of mistaken identity.

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