Leah Stewart, a 34-year-old Sydney teacher and mother of a one-year-old girl, has described how she fought off a massive great white shark with her fists after it dragged her underwater and left her critically injured, saying the thought of her daughter waiting on shore gave her the determination to survive.
Stewart was attacked June 13 at Coogee Beach in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, where she said she swam every day while staying close to shore and within designated swimming areas because of the risk of sharks. According to Australian media reports, the shark was a great white measuring about four meters, or 13 feet, long. The attack was reportedly the first at that particular beach in more than a century.
Leah Stewart, who survived a shark attack in Sydney, Australia
(Photo: nine)
Speaking to the Australian edition of “60 Minutes” on Nine, Stewart said she had already finished her morning swim and was heading back toward shore, where her family and baby daughter August were waiting, when she heard a girl scream. She turned and saw an enormous fin breaking the surface.
“It was huge,” Stewart said. “I saw the size of it and knew it wasn’t a dolphin.”
She initially tried to swim away but said something made her stop. “I stopped and I felt movement in the water, and when I turned around it was right there ... and it was getting closer and closer.”
Stewart described the shark’s face as terrifying, with a huge mouth, enormous teeth and “little black beady eyes.” At one point, she said, she and the shark were facing each other from just about 30 centimeters, or one foot, apart.
The attack took place roughly 30 meters from shore. Stewart said the shark then grabbed her by the thigh and pulled her underwater, forcing her to make a split-second decision.
“I don’t know how, but something in me just went into survival mode and everything was in slow motion,” she said. “When it had my leg, I thought, ‘This is it. This is how I die.’”
Then she thought of August.
“I thought, ‘She’s not going to have a mom. She’s going to grow up without a mom,’ and I couldn’t handle that thought,” Stewart said. “I didn’t want her to be left without a mom, so I just thought, ‘I have to fight this thing. I’m going to do everything I can to stay here.’”
Stewart said she managed to twist her body while the shark shook her and began punching it repeatedly in the snout.
“I knew I had to hit it in the nose as hard as I could,” she said. “I just started hitting it again and again. Punch, punch, punch. It was like fighting a dinosaur. It was so big. It was like punching a wall.”
Stewart said she knew to target the shark’s snout because she had previously watched an interview with Australian surfer Mick Fanning, who survived a shark attack during a competition in South Africa in 2015.
“I didn’t know that before watching the interview, so thank you, Mick,” she said.
One of her punches, she believes, finally convinced the shark to release her.
Before striking it, however, Stewart said she made another calculation: which arm she was prepared to lose.
“I thought, I have to try to punch it. I have to try to get it off me, otherwise it’s going to take my head off,” she said. “And at that moment I thought, okay, which limb am I willing to sacrifice? I’m right-handed. So I decided, let’s try a punch with my left hand.”
Her left arm was ultimately amputated. Her other arm and one of her legs were also badly injured.
After the shark released her, other swimmers pulled Stewart to shore, where medical professionals who happened to be nearby provided emergency treatment. She had lost so much blood that doctors were unable to find a vein for an IV.
Dr. Ian Ferguson, a trauma specialist who helped treat her at the scene, told “60 Minutes” that he drilled into the bone marrow in both of Stewart’s shoulders to give her fluids and later blood, which was flown to the scene by helicopter.
“I hoped she would survive until she got to hospital, but at that point I wasn’t sure she would,” Ferguson said.
Stewart was taken to a hospital in critical condition and remained in a coma for more than a week. She is now undergoing rehabilitation, has returned to walking and is learning to write again with her injured right hand.
Despite what happened, Stewart said she does not want to be remembered simply as the woman who was attacked at the beach.
She would rather be known as “the woman who punched a shark in the face.”
“I’m the woman who fought as hard as she could to be here, to be here for August,” she said. “It was the hardest thing in the world, but I fought my way out of there.”