PANAMA CITY, Fla. (AP) -- Doctors amputated a leg of a teenage boy who was attacked by a shark while fishing in waist-deep water off Florida's Panhandle on Monday, two days after a 14-year-old girl died when a shark mutilated her leg at another Panhandle beach, 80 miles away.
Craig Adam Hutto, 16, of Lebanon, Tenn., was fishing in the surf off Cape San Blas with his brother and a friend when the shark grabbed him in the right thigh, nearly severing the leg, said Capt. Bobby Plair of the Gulf County Sheriff's Office.
The three then attempted to wrestle the shark off the boy, hitting it in the nose several times as it bit the boy's left hand, Plair said. The teen was pulled ashore by his friends, and a doctor who happened to be nearby began treatment before he was taken to Bay Medical Center in Panama City, Plair said.
''It got the main arteries in the right leg,'' Plair said, adding that there was ''very much blood loss.''
The leg was later amputated at Bay Medical Center, Plair said. The boy was listed in critical condition but he was expected to recover, hospital spokeswoman Christa Hild said.
Gulf County Board of County Commissioners issued a mandatory closure for beaches in the county until 11 a.m. Tuesday. The shark, which got away, was about 6 to 8 feet long, Plair said, citing eyewitness reports.
Craig's family members, including the brother who was with him in the surf, declined comment at the hospital.
Cape San Blas is a narrow spit of land hooking into the Gulf of Mexico from Gulf County, about 80 miles southwest of Tallahassee. Plair said Gulf County has no lifeguards on any of its beaches.
The cape is a popular vacation destination more than 80 miles east of the area where 14-year-old Jamie Marie Daigle was fatally injured by a shark Saturday.
A shark expert said the number of shark attacks rise in the summer because they come closer to shore to search for food.
''I don't think there is any reason to come to a conclusion that this is strange,'' John Tyminski, a senior biologist with the Center for Shark Research at Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, said of the two attacks.
Daigle, of Gonzales, La., had been had been swimming with a friend about 100 yards from shore in neighboring Walton County when a shark bit her in the leg. Paramedics and an air ambulance crew were unable to revive her.
At a news conference discussing the girl's autopsy Monday, Erich Ritter of the Shark Attack Institute said the girl was likely attacked by a bull shark that was about 6 feet long, according to measurements taken of the bite.
Capt. Danny Glidewell, spokesman for the Walton County Sheriff's Office, said the county has called in 10 off-duty deputies to beef up patrols along a 20-mile stretch of shore and increased air and water patrols to look out for sharks. Those Destin-area beaches reopened Sunday.
Volunteer firefighter Chris White, 23, was vacationing on the beach Saturday when he heard cries for help. He leaped into the water to assist Daigle, not knowing it was a shark attack.
''I saw an empty boogie board, no rider,'' said White, said the state health inspector and volunteer firefighter from Carrollton, Ga., who recently completed emergency medical training. ''At first I thought she had maybe drowned or gone under.''
But Daigle, who had been swimming with a friend about 100 yards from shore, had been bit in the leg. Flesh had been torn from her hip to her knee, exposing her bone.
When White and another man with a raft reached Daigle, surfer Tim Dicus had already put the unconscious girl on his board.
''He was yelling 'There's a shark, there's a shark!''' White said. ''He was looking for the shark, I grabbed her, pulled her up into the raft.''
The shark returned as the trio pulled the girl to shore.
''Tim hollered 'He's here, he's here! There's the shark!''' White said. ''Immediately, I looked down and he was swimming at my feet. We stopped swimming, just went limp vertical in the water, just dangled my legs, tried not to look like any kind of food or anything.''
White said the surfer distracted the shark. Dicus said he punched it in the nose.
The others continued bringing Daigle to shore, but paramedics were unable to revive her.
Florida averaged more than 30 shark attacks a year from 2000 to 2003, but there were only 12 attacks off the state's coast last year, according to statistics compiled by the American Elasmobranch Society and the Florida Museum of Natural History.
George Burgess, curator of the International Shark Attack File at University of Florida, said Sunday that bull sharks are common in the area, are aggressive and can be found in shallow water. He said that of 500 documented attacks in Florida, the fatality rate was 2.4 percent.
''Sharks are one of many hazards that one may encounter when entering the sea,'' he said. ''There is no reason to think that this is the beginning of a trend.''
