PUERTO RICO — The wife of a former Atlanta Hawks player is recovering after she was attacked by a shark while vacationing in Puerto Rico.
Eleonora Boi was swimming in waist-deep water with her husband, Danilo Gallinari, and their children when a shark bit her thigh.
“I felt a strong pain and my thigh was burning,” Boi described to ABC News. “My idea was, maybe it’s a huge jellyfish...but it wasn’t a jellyfish.”
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“As soon as everyone started screaming, I had my son with me. I ran towards my wife and daughter,” Gallinari said.
The couple grabbed their children and rushed to shore where a woman helped put pressure on the wound until help arrived.
At the time, Boi was six months pregnant.
“I was saying, ‘I don’t want to die,’” she said. “I want that my baby is safe, and I was crying. I was desperate.”
Boi was rushed to the hospital where doctors told her they had never treated a shark bite victim before.
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She has weekly visits with the doctor and is expected to make a full recovery. But she says she remains traumatized.
The couple says they are grateful to the good Samaritan who stayed by their side through the whole ordeal.
"You know, she was an angel. Danilo was with me, and she, she helped so much. I would like to say thank you to this woman because I don’t know her name, and I just want to say thank you to her because she helped a lot," Boi said.
Gallinari played with the Hawks from 2020 to 2022 when he left for the Boston Celtics.
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