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Sydney woman recalls punching shark during Coogee Beach attack
Leah Stewart, 34, describes how she punched a four-metre great white shark after it attacked her at Coogee Beach in June, an ordeal that led to the amputation of her left arm. In a television interview, she recounted the moment the shark came within centimetres of her face and how thoughts of her daughter drove her to fight back.
By Tertius News AI Desk3 distinct · 3 mastheads · 3 articlesVersion 2Coverage Published
Survivor's account
Leah Stewart, a 34-year-old teacher and mother of a one-year-old, has described the moment she came face-to-face with a four-metre great white shark during a morning swim at Coogee Beach in Sydney's eastern suburbs on 13 June. In an interview aired on Sunday on Nine Network's 60 Minutes, Stewart recalled how the shark's open mouth came within centimetres of her face, leading to a split-second decision to punch it.
"It got to the point where it was about 30cm from my face and it started opening its mouth," she said, as reported by the Daily Express. "I'm like, 'It's going to get my face, it's going to bite my face'... I'm like, 'I've got to try and punch it. I've got to try and push it away or else it's going to bite my head off'."
Being right-handed, Stewart said she asked herself, "Which limb am I willing to lose?" before deciding to deliver "a left hook" with her left hand.
The attack and its aftermath
Stewart was attacked while swimming between the flags at Coogee Beach, according to the Daily Express. The shark bit into her thigh and arms, causing extreme blood loss. The BBC reported that doctors had to amputate her left arm because of the severity of her injuries. Stewart remained in critical condition for more than two weeks, according to The Guardian. She underwent multiple surgeries and spent two weeks in a coma, reported the Daily Express.
Stewart described the encounter as "like fighting a dinosaur," telling 60 Minutes: "In my head, I was like, 'you ugly fucker, you are not taking me away from my daughter', and I twisted myself around and I just started punching it over and over and over again... It was so big. It was like punching a brick wall."
She also recalled hearing a girl scream and turning to see a "huge, huge fin" before the shark ripped her forearm open. "There's a big gap between my forearm and the hand," Stewart said. After putting up the fight, she said she "must have got a really good one in and so it let me go."
Recovery and gratitude
Stewart, who also suffered serious tendon and nerve damage to her other arm, has received widespread support. Her family established a GoFundMe page that as of August 28 has surpassed £295,000, according to the Daily Express. In a message on the page, Stewart thanked supporters, saying she was "overwhelmed by the generosity" of donors.
The Daily Express reported that Stewart also expressed her gratitude to Charlie Verco, a championship paddleboarder who pulled her from the water before emergency responders arrived.
Context
Since July 1, drones have been deployed on 70 beaches, including every Sydney beach between Palm Beach and Cronulla, following a series of shark incidents, according to the Daily Express. The attack on Stewart occurred at Coogee Beach on 13 June, before that deployment began.
How each outlet told it
A framing line is our reading of that outlet's own text — an interpretation, not a quotation and not a fact we assert. Check it against what the outlet published.
Framing: The headline emphasizes the dramatic, heroic action of the mother punching the shark in the face during a horrific attack. — admiring and dramatic
Facts Included:
Leah Stewart, 34, was mauled by a four-metre long great white shark in June while swimming between the flags at Sydney's Coogee Beach.
In an interview with Nine's 60 Minutes programme, Leah recalled the moment the shark was about 30cm from her face and started opening its mouth.
She decided to punch the shark with her left hand, thinking 'let's do a left hook'.
She thought about her daughter August and that she was not going to have a mum.
The emergency 000 call recorded someone saying 'Hi, we've got a shark attack at Coogee Beach... there's a lot of blood.'
She underwent multiple surgeries and spent two weeks in a coma.
One procedure saw her lose one of her arms, and her other arm suffered serious tendon and nerve damage.
Her family set up a GoFundMe which has surpassed £295,000 as of August 28.
A message on the GoFundMe from Leah thanks supporters and says she is overwhelmed by the generosity.
Leah expressed gratitude to paddleboarder who helped her, though the name 'Verity' is not stated in the article.
Drones have been deployed along 70 beaches since July 1, including every Sydney beach between Palm Beach and Coogee.
Framing: Highlights Stewart's dramatic survival narrative, focusing on her left hook punch as a heroic act, with a vivid quote comparing the shark encounter to fighting a dinosaur. — sympathetic and admiring
Facts Included:
Leah Stewart, 34, a teacher and mother of a one-year-old, was attacked by a shark while on a morning swim at Coogee beach in Sydney’s eastern suburbs on 13 June.
Stewart lost an arm after the attack and remained in critical condition for more than two weeks.
Stewart described delivering a 'left hook' punch to the four-metre great white as its mouth came within centimetres of her face.
The shark got as close as 'about 30cm from my face'.
Stewart said she thought, 'Which limb am I willing to lose?' before deciding to punch the shark.
The shark delivered damaging bites to her left arm and thigh before help reached her.
Stewart recalled thinking of her one-year-old daughter, August, while lying on the beach and drifting in and out of consciousness.
Stewart said she had 'come out of the other side with a knowledge and a power that I didn’t have before'.
She said, 'I wasn’t just a girl that got mauled on the beach … I’m the woman that punched the shark in the face.'
AI-extracted; can misattribute a claim — see Methodology.
Each row is one claim, attributed to the outlet whose wording states it most clearly. Confidence rates how directly the source text states the claim — explicit and unhedged rates high; hedged, pieced-together, or internally inconsistent statements rate lower. It does not measure whether the claim is true. Status is Contested when two claims on this page negate each other; otherwise it counts the distinct outlets we found asserting it — so a single-source claim can still show high confidence, and a multi-source claim can show medium. Every one of those outlets is named beside the status, so you can check the count against the list. For claims extracted before we began storing that list, the row says so: it names the outlet the claim is quoted from and states that we have not recorded which outlets backed it. Outlets wrote at different times, so a figure that evolves — a casualty count, for example — can legitimately differ between rows; check the "as of" time next to each claim's source.
Claim
Confidence
Status
ClaimLeah Stewart, 34, a teacher and mother of a one-year-old, was attacked by a shark while on a morning swim at Coogee beach in Sydney’s eastern suburbs on 13 June.
ClaimLeah expressed her gratitude to Charlie Verco, a championship paddleboarder who pulled her from the water before emergency responders and medical teams arrived.
ClaimLeah Stewart, 34, was dragged under the water at Coogee Beach in June as the shark bit into her thigh and arms, leaving her with extreme blood loss and injuries so severe that doctors had to amputate her left arm.
ClaimStewart said: 'In my head, I was like, ... You are not taking me away from my daughter, and I twisted myself around and I just started punching it over and over and over again - it was like fighting a dinosaur.'