A fed-up fisherman has unleashed a blistering message to the Fox radio hosts and internet trolls who spent the past week tearing down shark attack survivor Leah Stewart after she laid bare her living nightmare on national television.
Last Sunday, the Sydney mother recounted her harrowing story of survival on 60 Minutes, detailing the moment she came face-to-face with a shark moments before it severed her arm and left her fighting for life on Coogee Beach in June.
“In my head, I was like ‘you ugly f**ker, you are not taking me away from my daughter’,” Ms Stewart told the current affairs program.
“I twisted myself around and I just started punching it over and over and over again … I think I must have got a really good one in. And so it let me go.”
The interview was the first time the mum spoke publicly about the attack – and with it came a savage pile on from keyboard warriors, who accused her of making up parts of the story they claim she simply wouldn’t have remembered.
Even Fox FM’s Fifi, Fev & Nick questioned the mother’s account of events, with host Brendan Fevola wondering whether there was a “a lot of mayo” in Ms Stewart’s story.
Fed up with the running commentary, shark expert Joel Nancarrow, also known as Hunter Shark Jaw Restoration by his social media followers, issued a blunt message to Ms Stewart’s online trolls, slamming them as “the problem”.
“The amount of judging and accusations of exaggerating while she was literally being eaten alive is beyond comprehension,” he wrote in a lengthy statement on Saturday.
“She’s being abused for calling the shark a monster while she was in its mouth. She’s quite entitled to call it whatever she wants in this situation, the fact that people even bring that up is the reason we (put) warning labels on batteries telling us not to eat them.”
Mr Nancarrow said he observed the baseless comment “it’s their home” more than he could count, questioning how it would make the situation “any more less scary”.
“Just because people are living life and not hiding behind their screens scared of everything in the big wide (world) doesn’t mean this stuff doesn’t suck, people die in car accidents all the time, cars are on the road, it’s still tragic,” he said.
“If a shark attack where a woman almost lost her life and a child her mother, makes you deep think into how you can belittle her in an online comment section as your first thought, YOU ARE THE PROBLEM.”
The fisherman also took a swipe at Fevola’s mayo comment, to which he reacted with a facepalm emoji.
“Her brain would have been going a million miles an hour while being in the mouth of a great white and she can tell the story however she wants to and should not be ridiculed for it,” Mr Nancarrow said.
“Anyway, if you ever see this Leah, your one tough mumma. Keep up that fighter spirit and keep charging legend!”
Hundreds of fans backed Mr Nancarrow’s words of support and also took aim at the faceless trolls making senseless comments about Ms Stewart’s experience.
“I’ve literally had to stop reading comments in some articles the last couple of weeks because my blood just boils,” one person said in response to Mr Nancarrow’s statement.
“Where the f**k is the compassion these days, people are so f**king cruel it’s unbelievable.”
A second comment said: “People need to think before they post. This poor girl has to learn how to navigate life and parenting after a life-changing injury and we need to be supportive and let her recover and get on with life.”
Ms Stewart sustained life-altering injuries in the attack, which occurred while she was swimming in shallow waters off Coogee Beach in Sydney’s eastern suburbs.
After suffering multiple bites to her arms and legs, the mum was put in a coma for 10 days and had the lower part of her left arm amputated.
She is still recovering three months on from the attack and has an open wound on her leg that’s being treated with a device that sucks fluid out and pulls the wound together.
“I’ve had one of these with me for three months. I used to have one five times this size but I’m very excited to have a smaller one now,” the mum said in an update to Instagram.
“It is a little machine that is connected to my leg. My leg is still an open wound at the moment. Hopefully, it will be closing soon with my second trial at a skin graft.”
A GoFundMe was set up to assist the family during Ms Stewart’s recovery and gained more than $550k in donations.
The mum told her generous donors she felt as if she had received a “second chance at life” and would not let it go to waste.
News.com.au has contacted Mr Nancarrow for comment.