A Sydney woman who survived a shark attack has described the moment she came face-to-face with a 4m great white before repeatedly punching it.
Leah Stewart, 34, was dragged under the water at Coogee Beach in June as the shark bit into her thigh and arms, leaving her with extreme blood loss and injuries so severe that doctors had to amputate her left arm.
In an interview which aired on Sunday, the mother-of-one said she was determined to live for the sake of her baby daughter.
“In my head, I was like, … ‘You are not taking me away from my daughter’, and I twisted myself around and I just started punching it over and over and over again – it was like fighting a dinosaur”.
Moments earlier, Stewart had just finished her regular Saturday morning swim and was heading back to shore when she was alerted to danger.
“I heard a girl behind me… a shrill shriek. I turned and there was a huge, huge fin behind her. It was massive,” she told Nine Network’s 60 Minutes.
“I looked at the size of it and I realised that’s not a dolphin.”
Stewart turned around and realised the shark was “right there … and it just was getting closer and closer and closer.”
The shark’s face was “horrific” with “black little beady eyes” and it’s “teeth and its mouth was massive”.
“We were looking face-to-face,” Stewart said, and at one point, the shark was just 30cm from her own.
Even in that moment, Stewart’s thoughts remained calm.
“I’m right-handed, so I thought ‘let’s do a left hook’,” she said.
“I just kind of throw my left arm and it just grabs onto my forearm and rips, rips away my skin, my muscle, everything… there’s a big gap between my forearm and the hand.”
The shark started to pull Stewart under the water, grabbing her leg.
“I had the thought, ‘this is it, this is how I die’ and then I just thought of [my daughter] August and I thought she’s not going to have a mum, she’s gonna grow up without a mum,” she said, fighting back tears.
“I just knew I couldn’t leave her… I know it sounds strange but I sort of willed myself back.”
Fighting the shark felt “like punching a brick wall” but she kept going.
“I must have got a really good one in and so it let me go. It was the hardest thing in the world, but I fought my way out of there.”
Stewart was pulled to the shore by other swimmers and rushed to hospital, where she was placed in an induced coma and underwent almost a dozen surgeries.
Despite her harrowing experience, Stewart said she doesn’t want to be remembered as “a girl that got mauled on the beach”.
“I’m the woman that punched the shark in the face,” she said.
