Shark attack survivor recalls punching four-metre great white at Sydney beach

An Australian woman who lost an arm after a shark attack at a Sydney beach has described delivering a “left hook” punch to the four-metre great white as its open mouth came within centimetres of her face.

Leah Stewart, 34, a teacher and mother of a one-year-old, was attacked by the shark while on a morning swim at Coogee beach in Sydney’s eastern suburbs on 13 June.

She remained in a critical condition for more than two weeks while receiving treatment for life-threatening injuries that required the amputation of her arm.

In her first media interview since the attack, Stewart recalled the moment she spotted the great white shark.

“I’ve never screamed that loud and that crazy in my life … I’m just thinking, ‘surely the lifeguards will hear us screaming, a jetski is going to come out any second and scare it away’,” she told Nine’s 60 Minutes.

“But a minute went by and it was still there and no one had come to save me.”

Stewart said the shark got as close as “about 30cm from my face”, remembering “its black little beady eyes”.

“Its face was horrific. I’ll never forget its face,” she said.

“It sort of started opening its mouth and I’m like, ‘it’s going to get my face … 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 the split-second decision to deliver “a left hook” came after asking herself: “Which limb am I willing to lose?”

Stewart said the following moments happened “in slow motion”, describing it as “like fighting a dinosaur”.

“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,” she said. “It was so big. It was like punching a brick wall.”

The shark delivered damaging bites to her left arm and thigh before help reached her. Lying on the beach and drifting in and out of consciousness, Stewart recalled thinking “I can’t die right now” as she thought of her one-year-old daughter, August.

“I could feel my life slipping away,” Stewart said. “It just felt like everything was leaving my body and I was going somewhere and just as I was about to reach the end of the tunnel, I just got a vision of August.

“I thought, ‘she’s not going to have a mum. She’s going to grow up without a mum.’

“I couldn’t handle that. I didn’t want her to not have a mum.”

Stewart spent several weeks in intensive care receiving treatment for life-changing injuries that she says she is “still coming to terms” with.

“I get really frustrated. You know, August will put up her hands and she’ll want me to pick her up. I’m just desperate to, I just really want to pick her up and I just can’t,” she said.

“I do have a disability, but I don’t want that to hold me back. I’m going to find ways to be able to conquer this and to be the best version of myself … I’ve been given a second chance.”

She said she had “come out of the other side with a knowledge and a power that I didn’t have before”.

“I wasn’t just a girl that got mauled on the beach … I’m the woman that punched the shark in the face,” she said.