Leah Stewart, who lost part of her arm in a shark attack in Australia, has said the thought of her 18-month-old daughter helped her survive. In her first public remarks since the attack two months ago off the coast of Sydney, Stewart, 35, said: "All I was thinking of was August and I thought, 'She's not going to have a mum'.
"I couldn't handle that. I did not want her to grow up without a mum." Stewart described the great white that mauled her as a "monster" and said: "Its face was horrific. I will never forget. It was holding on to my leg. I just thought, 'I've got to fight it and do everything I can to be here'."
Coma and operations after attack
Stewart, a teacher, was in a coma for a fortnight after the attack and underwent operations including the amputation of much of her left arm. She felt she had been given "a second chance at life", she said, and had spent the past two months healing and slowly returning to normal life.
A GoFundMe campaign set up after the attack has raised £300,000 for her support.
Lifeguard describes rescue
The attack prompted New South Wales to introduce drone patrols to monitor sharks. If one is spotted, operators sound an alarm ordering swimmers to shore. After the attack, the off-duty lifeguard who saved Leah revealed she thought she had felt a dolphin before being bitten.
Charlie Verco, 25, was paddle boarding about 100 metres from Leah when the attack occurred at Coogee Beach on June 13. Leah was swimming about 30 metres from shore when she was mauled by a great white shark, with Charlie paddling towards the shark before helping the mother out of the water.
Shark's size revealed
Speaking on the Straight Talk podcast, Charlie said it was not clear immediately before the attack that a shark was in the water. He said: "I actually found out that she felt the shark before she saw it and said it felt like a wetsuit material and she thought it was a dolphin, looked around and saw that it was a shark and that was when she started screaming."
Despite paddling towards danger, he said he thought his large paddleboard "would probably frighten the shark and scare it off." But those thoughts changed when he saw the size of the great white. "I was paddling over with that kind of intention, still pretty scared, still pretty hesitant," he said. "I eventually saw the shark come out of the water. I saw the dorsal fin, saw the back, saw the tail, and I saw the size of it… this thing's a pretty solid animal."
