DENVER — A teenager from Aspen was severely injured in a shark attack while scuba diving in Belize.

Annabelle Carlson, 15, had just finished scuba diving with a tour group and her family while on vacation in Belize when she decided to jump back into the water for a quick swim, according to a GoFundMe page set up by a family friend.

“That’s when the unimaginable encounter happened. The odds are 1 in 11.5 million that this could happen,” the fundraising page stated. “That unimaginable encounter was a shark attack. It was a very aggressive, very traumatic, terror-filled fight for her life.”

The family friend, Aja Jewell, said Carlson was “critically injured” in the attack, but didn’t specify how the teenager was injured.

According to Jewell, emergency responders in Belize airlifted Carlson to a trauma medical center in Belize City. Once Carlson was stabilized, she was flown back to the United States, where she remains hospitalized.

“Annabelle will have a very long road of recovery ahead of her,” Jewell wrote in the GoFundMe. “All of the details are not being shared for privacy for the family and for Annabelle. As her strength returns, the family will be giving regular updates, which we will share as often as we can.”

Carlson is a rising sophomore at Aspen High School and plays both lacrosse and basketball on the school’s junior varsity teams.

The tour group operators with Belize Dive Pro and the Belize Coast Guard did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

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