‘Shark had her in its jaws’: Hero’s Coogee beach rescue

An off-duty lifeguard has recalled the ****** scene as a shark ****** a woman at one of Sydney’s most popular beaches.

An off-duty lifeguard who helped save a woman ****** by a shark at Sydney’s Coogee beach has recalled seeing her inside the animal’s jaws as it pulled her underwater.

The woman in her 30s was left with ****** ****** after being ****** close to shore about 11.10am on sparkling day at the busy beach on Saturday.

A doctor who ran to help the woman described “******” ******, with several people using makeshift tourniquets to stop the ******. She was rushed to St Vincent’s Hospital.

Aerial footage taken by a drone showed a large shark, estimated to be three to four metres long, lurking in the crystal clear waters soon after the ******.

North Bondi Surf lifesaver and ironman Charlie Verco was doing a training paddle between Bondi and Maroubra when he heard cries of “shark” as he reached Coogee.

North Bondi Surf lifesaver and ironman Charlie Verco sprung into action as he realised what was happening.

In media interviews on Saturday, Mr Verco said other swimmers tried to pull themselves onto his board but he told them “I have to help”.

“The shark had her in its jaws,” Mr Verco told The Daily Telegraph.

“I saw the shark come out of the water and just the size of it shocked me.

“I kept paddling towards her and the shark took her underwater and I was going, ‘What do I do now?’ A couple of seconds later she popped up again.”

Mr Verco signalled to lifeguards on the beach with an X sign – meaning a swimmer was missing or submerged – and paddled toward her.

He told the Sydney Morning Herald he had felt the shark was too big to fight off, but then the woman’s head popped back up, suggesting “the shark had let go of her”.

“It was one of the scariest things, not being able to see whether it would come at my board or her again,” he said.

The ****** happened during an unseasonably warm and sunny winter’s morning at Coogee beach.

Mr Verco helped bring the woman back to shore, saying she was trying to cling to his 18-foot board while he paddled.

“She managed to get hold of the nose of my board but then she was too weak to get onto it,” he told the Telegraph.

“We started to paddle back but then she went under again. I managed to hold onto her and drag her and we made it in.”

Dr Ian Ferguson, a Coogee local and emergency physician, was walking on the promenade with his children when the ****** scene unfolded.

He saw a “big cloud of ******” in the water close to the shore before grabbing shark ****** kits and a defibrillator and heading for the sand.

“It was like someone had poured dye into the water,” Dr Ferguson said.

“It was a ****** ******. She had a 30cm ****** to her thigh. The ****** ****** ****** ****** ****** ****** ****** and the ****** ****** ******.

“There was a similar ****** to her arm.”

Coogee Surf Lifesaving club president Ben Heenan also paddled out to the woman after hearing screaming and movement in the water.

“With the adrenaline going it is just what you do,” he said.

“I’m on a board and she is still in the water, so the focus is just getting her out.

“She was breathing … she wasn’t talking but she wasn’t unconscious,” he said.

“We started applying appropriate first aid, tourniquets and the like.”

Coogee beach and other beaches in the Waverley and Randwick council areas remain closed on Sunday following the ****** ******.

It was the fifth shark ****** in NSW since September, when Mercury “Merc” Psillakis was ****** while surfing in Sydney’s Northern Beaches.

On January 18, 12-year-old Nico Antic ****** after being ****** in murky waters at Vaucluse’s Jump Rock.

Surfer Andre de Ruyter, 27, ****** ****** ****** from an ****** in Manly about dusk on January 19.

Dr Chris Pepin-Neff, a shark policy expert at the University of Sydney, said the Coogee ****** was “very, very strange” for a number of reasons.

Based on the cooler 18 degree water temperature, recent shark movements and sightings and the nature of the ******, Dr Pepin-Neff said his educated assumption was the shark was a Great White.

He also noted SMART drumlines were still in place at Coogee beach.

“People think because the shark nets are out there’s no protection, that isn’t the case,” he said.

Shark nets were removed from the beach about a month and a half ago. Randwick council’s website states “nets are installed at Coogee and Maroubra beaches from 1 September to 30 April, covering most of spring, summer and autumn”.

These nets are not a complete barrier to sharks. At 150m long and 6m deep, with a mesh size of 60cm, they sit about 4m below the surface of the water and within 500m of the shore.

It is understood the swimmer was doing laps between the flags at Coogee when she was ******.

Randwick and Waverley councils closed all beaches in the city’s east on Saturday and closures continue today.