MYRTLE BEACH -- Myrtle Beach Beach Patrol says it was a stingray, not a shark, that bit a 16-year-old from Virginia Tuesday in the Atlantic Ocean.
Police say the 16-year old boy was standing in waist-deep water when he was bitten on his foot. He was taken to Grand Strand Regional Medical Center with non-life threatening injuries.
Last week, four people were bitten by sharks within minutes of each other in one day, leading officials to keep people out of the water at that location for about an hour.
However, the beach was never closed from Tuesday's incident.
"We just got on the beach, he went running in the water and about ten seconds into it, he got bit on the foot by a shark," said Robbie Snell of Virginia Beach, Virginia.
"He said his foot was very numb," added Noah Mullinax of Winchester, Virginia. "It was just very piercing, like glass, like he has a hole in the bottom and top of his foot."
The teenager and his friends are in a Virginia-based band that just arrived Tuesday morning for a gig in Myrtle Beach, after performing in North Carolina Monday night.
Mullinax said the boys got up early, because they were excited to be on the Grand Strand, and then just minutes after they got to the beach, they had a friend headed to the hospital.
Others said paramedics told them that it looked like their friend's injuries were caused by a shark, but it turned out to be a stingray.
Two weeks ago, another man was bitten by a shark while swimming near the 2nd Avenue pier.
