Leah Stewart was staring down a shark’s open jaws when she made a split-second choice: sacrifice her left arm and fight back. The Australian teacher says she landed a “left hook” before the animal dragged her beneath the surface at a Sydney beach.
Ms Stewart, a primary school teacher, was placed in an induced coma and later lost part of her left arm following the attack at Coogee Beach on 13 June.
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She had gone for a late-morning swim in what she described as “crystal clear” water, unaware that a shark was nearby. Witnesses said the animal appeared to be a great white measuring as much as four metres in length.
Ms Stewart said she was nearing the sand at the end of her swim when a girl’s scream broke the calm.
“I looked at the size of it and I realised, that’s not a dolphin. And so we just start screaming at the top of our lungs, just like ‘shark, shark, shark’,” Ms Stewart said.
She continued swimming for several strokes before sensing something in the water. When she turned, the shark was moving slowly towards her.
“Its face was horrific. I’ll never forget its face, it was huge. And its teeth, and its mouth was massive, and its eyes, it’s just black little beady eyes. We were looking face to face,” Ms Stewart said.
Convinced the shark was about to attack her face, she decided to strike first.
“I thought, well, which limb am I willing to lose? I’m right-handed, so I decided let’s do a left hook.
“I just kind of throw my left arm, and it just grabs onto my forearm and rips, rips away my skin, my muscle, everything,” she said.
‘Like fighting a dinosaur’
Ms Stewart said shock took over as she looked down and saw the damage to her own hand.
“The next moment, I feel it grab onto my left thigh, and it rips me underwater.”
As she was pulled below the surface, Ms Stewart drew in a deep breath and focused on staying alive for her young daughter, August.
“I twisted myself around, and I just started punching it over and over and over again, just punch, punch, punch, and it was like fighting a dinosaur.”
“It was so big; it was like punching a brick wall. And I think I must have got a really good one in. And so it let me go, and I just kind of popped back up,” she added.
Ms Stewart, who is in her mid-30s, was brought to shore by Charlie Verco, an elite paddleboarder who happened to be nearby in the water.
Medics began treating her on the beach before she was transported to hospital.
Doctors began reducing her sedation about 10 days after the attack, allowing her to wake from the coma.
Australian scientists say warming ocean temperatures are altering sharks’ migratory routes, a shift that could be contributing to an increase in attacks.
In January, a 12-year-old boy died after being bitten by a shark while swimming in Sydney Harbour.
Between May and June, three divers were killed in separate shark attacks — two in Western Australia and another in Queensland.
A database tracking encounters between sharks and humans records nearly 1,300 incidents across Australia since 1791, with more than 260 ending in death.
