SYDNEY, Australia: A shark mauled a woman as she swam in Sydney Harbour in a gruesome attack that left her in a hospital with a “serious” leg injury, officials and media said on Tuesday.
The predator struck on Monday night as the woman swam from a jetty in Elizabeth Bay, less than two kilometers (1.2 miles) from the iconic Sydney Opera House, police said.
The woman suffered a “serious injury to her right leg”, NSW police said in a statement.
It was the first shark attack in Sydney Harbor since 2009, when an Australian Navy diver defeated a bull shark that bit him on the hand and leg in Woolloomooloo Bay.
Neighbours rushed to the aid of Elizabeth Bay, the Sydney Morning Herald reported, identifying her as 29-year-old Lauren O’Neill.
It quoted one resident as hearing her “soft cries” for help from his window.
“She was trying to get in and behind her was a leg that was completely open and full of dark red blood behind her,” resident Michael Porter said.
“It was surreal. We’ve always been afraid and knew about sharks in the harbor … it just feels very real now.”
A veterinarian living nearby applied a tourniquet, the paper said.
“She swam to the boat and on the way back she was bitten by, I think it was a bull shark,” another witness told local news outlet OnScene Bondi.
“We caught up. My wife is a vet and she basically bandaged it up,” said the witness, who has not been named.
The woman was in stable condition in the intensive care unit at St. Vincent’s Hospital, a hospital spokeswoman said. She was likely to undergo surgery during the day.
In February 2002, Simon Nellis, the 35-year-old British diving instructor was devoured off Sydney’s ocean beach Little Bay, the first fatal attack in the city since 1963.
