Jack Roll, of Friendswood, Texas, saw it before anyone else and decided it was nothing. He took the dark shape in the water off a secluded beach in the Bahamas to be a rock. Then, he thought it was a nurse shark, the docile kind he and his family had been swimming near all day.
“I was like, ‘Oh, it’s just a nurse shark,’” the 16-year-old told KPRC 2 in June.
Turns out it was a reef shark, and it soon took hold of his 12-year-old brother’s leg.
The situation was dire
Parker Roll, didn’t feel it at first. “I remember looking down, and I just see this head, and this head’s well over a foot wide,” he told Good Morning America. “I didn’t really feel it at first, because there’s just so much adrenaline.” He described looking down at a head over a foot across clamped around his calf. He was able to walk out of the water. Then he couldn’t walk at all.
The pain arrived after. “It felt like a knife was stabbed into my calf and then twisted, and then someone was laying on top of it.”
Jack was already moving. “He jumps out and he’s screaming, and I see this massive gash on his shin,” he told KHOU. “I was like, ‘That needs to be stopped.’”
Without hesitation, Jack took off his swimsuit, tied it around his brother’s leg, picked him up, and carried him to the beach.
Their brother Adam ran up the hill toward the boat crew. “I immediately ran up the hill, and I started screaming to get a first aid kit,” he said.
The family was more than 60 miles offshore near Staniel Cay with no cell service and no radio contact. It took roughly 45 minutes before they could reach anyone.
The crew eventually helped carry Parker onto the boat for the long ride back where an ambulance was waiting.
A miraculous rescue
He had surgery and needed about 1,000 stitches. Though he isn’t walking unassisted yet, Parker’s expected to fully recover.
The boy has been clear about the math. “I’m very thankful he did, because at the rate I was losing blood, it could have been fatal,” he said. “Because, you know, I don’t have that much blood. I’m very little.”
“I just thought I was gonna die,” he told GMA. “I definitely consider myself very lucky, as that shark could’ve easily taken my leg off. I definitely consider him as my hero, as he stopped the bleeding and saved my life.”
