‘So gnarly’: Surfer bit by shark uses leash to make tourniquet, drives to hospital

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    VOLUSIA COUNTY, Florida (WESH) — One Edgewater man has spent decades riding the waves. He’s helped many people out of the water after a shark bite, but this time it was him.

As owner of the Gnarly Charley Surf Series, Charley Hajek has seen it and experienced it all.

“I’ve been I’ve been stung by some nasty jellyfish, box jellyfish,” Hajek said. “But, yeah — various things. Lots of surfboard accidents.”

Sunday morning was his first-ever shark bite.

“I got bit on the bottom of my foot, and I got bit on the outside of my ankle,” he said.

Hajek had been out surfing when he accidentally stepped on the shark.

“By the time I even thought twice about it, it just bam! It bit me up,” Hajek said. “Man, I felt like I stepped my foot on a light socket.”

Hajek took off.

“I take that first step on the beach, and all those little teeth, you could see them,” he said. “Those are perfect little slices of my leg everywhere, and it just opened up like a flower and blew blood out everywhere. Man, it was so gnarly. “

But what’s most impressive, Hajek managed to grab the leash of his surfboard and wrap his leg a few times, crafting a tourniquet and headed to the hospital.

“Who took you?” he was asked.

“I just drove myself,” Hajek responded.

“You drove yourself?” asked WESH 2 reporter Pamela Comme.

“I know, that’s what they said at the hospital,” Hajek said.

Hajek was stitched up and sent home, and like many surfers, this is not enough to keep him out of the water.

“I’m anxious to get back out there,” he added.

What he’s most bummed about is that he broke his 148-day surfing streak, but once the stitches are off in a few days, he has all the time in the world to beat and surpass that streak.

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