He Punched Shark To Save Brother
Brian Hutto and his brother Craig were about 40 yards off the Florida Panhandle town of Cape San Blas Monday, getting set to start fishing, when their lives changed in an instant.
A bull shark attacked Craig, 16.
"We actually didn't have a pole in the water," Brian told The Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith Thursday. "We were just holding them above (the water) and making our way out to cast. And something bumped Craig. And then the attack took place immediately after.
"Craig began to backpedal, and it latched on and it took him down for just a second. He got his feet. And I made my way over. And Craig started making his way to the beach. We just pulled and kicked and punched and did all we could do to get there."
Brian, 25, says he punched the shark at least once: "I'm not sure how many times. It was kind of a blur. But Craig was fighting just as much as I was. He wanted to get free, too.
"It didn't last very long at all. We weren't really that far off the shoreline. So we just pulled and pulled. My dad and some other men from the beach met us pretty quickly and took him the rest of the way."
Craig and Brian's father, Roger Hutto, told Smith he and his wife, Lou Ann Hutto, were on the beach, along with Brian's wife, watching the brothers fish: "And when it occurred, we knew pretty immediately what had happened. Especially after the initial attack."
Two days earlier, an unrelated shark attack off Destin, 80 miles west along the Panhandle, cost a 14-year-old girl, Jamie Daigle of Gonzales, La., her life.
Roger credits medical personnel who happened to be at the beach with saving Craig's life: "Once Brian got Craig where we could reach him and help him get to shore, we were just blessed to have three nurses that just happened to be there, a doctor was there, an EMT person was there. And it's very convincing to us that we wouldn't be sitting here today, had those people not been there. Because they knew exactly what to do, those nurses did exactly what they were trained to do. And if they hadn't have been there controlling the situation, Craig never would have made it, I don't believe."
Roger says Craig is in stable condition, progressing a bit each day and, "We're able to talk to him now and make eye contact with him."
But doctors at the hospital in Panama City, Fla., had to amputate a leg. Lou Ann says once Craig realized it, "He was really upset, as can be expected. But I think he's looking to the future."