Police and the media said Tuesday that a woman was bitten by a shark while swimming in Sydney Harbour. The woman was taken to the hospital with a “serious” leg injury. The woman was swimming off a wharf at Elizabeth Bay on Monday night when she was attacked, police said. She was less than two kilometers (1.2 miles) from the famous Sydney Opera House.
Police in New South Wales said in a statement that the woman had a “serious injury to her right leg.”
It was the first shark attack in Sydney Harbor since 2009, when a navy diver in Woolloomooloo Bay fought off a bull shark that bit him in the arm and leg.
The Sydney Morning Herald said that the victim in Elizabeth Bay was 29-year-old Lauren O’Neill and that her neighbors ran to help her. One neighbor said that from his window, he heard her “soft yell” for help.
Residents Michael Porter and Mary Porter both said, “She was trying to climb in, and behind her was her leg, which was completely open and full of dark red blood.”
“It was strange.” Everyone has been scared and aware of the sharks in the harbor, but now it really hits home. The paper said that a close vet used a tourniquet.
Another witness told the local news station OnScene Bondi, “She swam out to the boat and on her way back, she got bit by, I think it was a bull shark.” “We were done. The witness, who did not want to be named, said, “My wife is a vet, and she pretty much bandaged it up.”
Someone from St. Vincent’s hospital said the woman was in stable condition in critical care. The process was supposed to happen during the day.
British diving teacher Simon Nellis, 35, was killed off the beach at Little Bay in Sydney in February 2002. It was the city’s first fatal attack since 1963.
Source: NDTV
