Teen surfer Maggie Drozdowski ‘traumatized’ by shark attack off New Jersey coast

A 15-year-old girl who was attacked by a shark while surfing off the coast of New Jersey this weekend said that she screamed in terror while underwater and did not fully realize what happened until she emerged from the ocean.

Moving around on crutches due to her injuries Monday, Maggie Drozdowski said her close encounter with the apex predator has left her “traumatized.”

The teenage dancer and surfer from Chester County, Pennsylvania, shared her harrowing tale of survival in an interview with CBS Philadelphia less than 24 hours after her close call.

On Sunday afternoon, Drozdowski and a friend were surfing near the 110th Street beach in Stone Harbor, New Jersey.

She said her board had just been washed away by a big wave when a shark latched onto her left foot and dragged her underwater.

“I was in shock and I didn’t even realize what was going on until I was out of the water,” Drozdowski said with a nervous smile. “But it scared me. I screamed under the water. It was scary.”

The 15-year-old surfer said she fought for her life by frantically trying to shake the shark off her foot.

“I really shook it off as much as I could. It was hard, though; it was heavy. But I shook my foot as hard as I could to get it off,” Drozdowski said. 

Her friend and surfing buddy Sarah O’Donnell recounted how she heard Drozdowski repeatedly screaming, “Something bit me!”

O’Donnell, not knowing that her friend had just been attacked by a shark, said she instructed Drozdowski to get back on her board and paddle toward the shore.

“I thought it was a crab or something. I could never imagine a shark.” O’Donnell said.

Drozdowski said it took her three or four minutes to reach dry land, where she wrapped a towel around her injured foot to stop the bleeding before paramedics arrived.

The young surfer sustained deep lacerations to her foot and calf requiring six stitches — but none of them life-threatening.

“I thought I was gonna have to get my foot amputated,” Drozdowski said. “But it didn’t end up being that bad.”

Officials in Stone Harbor said in a statement that the New Jersey State Southern Regional Medical Examiner’s Office has concluded that the surfer’s wounds were “consistent with those typically associated with a shark of unknown size and type.”

According to the International Shark Attack File, there have been 15 confirmed shark attacks in New Jersey. The last one happened in 2006.

The beach in Stone Harbor remained open after the surfer’s run-in with the shark.

Still reeling from her brush with death, Drozdowski said she has no plans of going back into the ocean this summer.