It was bad: Shark attacks woman in waters just off popular California beach

A shark attacked a woman who was wading in the waters off a popular North San Diego County beach Saturday evening.

According to multiple reports, the attack happened just after 6 p.m. PDT in a surf spot known as Church near San Onofre Beach along the Camp Pendleton base. The woman, whose identity was not revealed, was wading in the water when she was bitten, park aide Travis Lara told the Orange County Register. The woman was airlifted to Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune, and her condition was unknown.

The woman was bitten on her “glute and down her thigh,” Lara said. She was one of four, two of whom were on surfboards, in the area during the attack. The woman was wearing swim fins and wading in the water, he said.

Two surfers pulled her from the water and a surf leash was used on her upper thigh to stanch the bleeding. “It was definitely to the point, her hamstring was gone,” Thomas Williams, who recently completed EMT training, told the Register. “If she didn’t receive immediate care, it was life-threatening. … All of the back of her leg was kind of missing.”

“Somebody just yelled ‘shark’, you know, and like ‘Shark! My friend got bit!’ got us kind of, he was just yelling it on the beach,” Hunter Robinson, one of the rescuers, told NBC 7.

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“The back of her leg was really badly bit, you know, just to the bone, from above her knee to above to her butt, it was bad,” Robinson said. “It was a real bite, yeah. I’ll never forget it, ever. It was like full what you would imagine in a shark bite.”

The beach is expected to be closed for at least 72 hours, Lara said. “We’ve had a few sightings lately,” he said. “This is a first for us.”

Last Memorial Day, a swimmer was bitten by a shark off Corona del Mar, roughly 25 miles north of the Saturday attack.

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