Sydney mother Leah Stewart has spoken publicly for the first time about the shark attack that left her fighting for her life at New South Wales’ Coogee Beach.
The 34-year-old was swimming near the shore on June 13 when she was attacked by a four-metre great white shark, suffering catastrophic injuries that ultimately resulted in the amputation of her left arm.
Ms Stewart spent weeks in a critical condition in hospital and underwent almost a dozen surgeries, including a skin graft on her thigh.
Speaking with 60 Minutes, Ms Stewart revealed new details of the attack, including the moment she came face-to-face with the shark and the desperate fight that followed.
She said the thought of her young daughter August growing up without a mother was what drove her to fight for her life.
“I’m the woman that fought like hell to be here, to be here for August, and it was the hardest thing in the world, but I fought my way out of there,” Ms Stewart told Nine’s Tracy Grimshaw.
Ms Stewart said she had always been mindful of the risks when swimming in open water and did what she could to be safe.
“I would never swim at sunrise or sunset, only on crystal clear days,” she said.
“Staying really close to shore, that’s something I sort of tried to do.”
On the day of the attack, she was swimming back to shore when she heard screams in the water.
“I heard a girl behind me just scream, kind of like a shrill shriek, and I turned and there was a huge, huge fin behind her, it was massive,” she said.
“I stopped and I could feel movement in the water, and I turned around and it was right there.”
The animal moved towards her with its mouth open before stopping just centimetres from her face.
“I will never forget its face,” Ms Stewart said.
“It was huge and its teeth and its mouth was massive and its eyes, it’s just black little beady eyes, we were just looking face to face.
“It was a monster.”
With the shark directly in front of her, Ms Stewart made the incredible decision to fight back.
“When it was holding on to my leg I had the thought, ‘this is it, this is how I die’,” she said.
Her thoughts quickly turned to her daughter August, who was on the sand with family members.
“Then I just thought of August and I thought, ‘she’s not going to have a mum,” Ms Stewart said through tears.
“I couldn’t handle that.
“I’m going to do everything I can to be here’.
“You ugly f***er, you’re not taking me away from my daughter”.
Ms Stewart said she could feel the shark shaking her but twisted her body around and punched the animal’s snout as hard as she could.
“I just started punching it over and over and over again, just punch, punch, punch,” she said.
“It was like fighting a dinosaur, it was so big.
“It was like punching a brick wall.”
The attack left Ms Stewart with devastating injuries to both arms and her left leg.
She was pulled from the water by world champion paddleboarder Charlie Verco, before being treated on the beach by surf lifesaver Ben Heenan, frontline trauma specialist Dr Ian Ferguson.
With Ms Stweart having lost a significant amount of blood, doctors struggled to establish conventional intravenous access.
Dr Ferguson used an emergency procedure to deliver fluids and blood directly to bone marrow in her shoulders.
She was then rushed to St Vincent’s Hospital in a critical condition where a team of surgeons worked to save her life.
In hospital her condition was so extreme that she was categorised as “not being compatible with life”.
For ten days after the attack, Ms Stewart’s family waited, not knowing if she would survive.
Last week, Ms Stewart shared a powerful message to her GoFundMe page, which was set up by her brother following the attack.
Ms Stewart said she felt she had been given a “second chance at life” and was finally seeing “some light”.
“After what has been an incredibly difficult few months, I’m so happy that I’ve progressed enough to build some independence, and I can finally see some light after all of this,” she wrote on the fundraiser.
She issued a heartfelt thanks to those who had donated.
“I’ve been actively trying to do everything in my power to get back to some sort of normal life,” Ms Stewart wrote.
“I still have a long way to go, but my recovery has been remarkable, and a huge part of that is because of the absolute army of love, support, prayers and encouragement surround my family and I from all over the world.
“That means more to me than I can say, and I truly believe it’s played a huge role in my recovery.
“Once again, I don’t feel like I can say thank you enough.”
Ms Stewart said she had turned off donations on the page, given she had raised enough for her recovery and future medical expenses.
The page had raised more than half-a-million dollars in donations at the time of closure.
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