Wooli Beach shark attack: Mani Hart-Deville teen surfer mauled to death while surfing with mates. Thought to be victim of great white shark attack.
A 17 year old Australian teen surfer has died after being bitten by a shark in the country’s 10th shark attack this year.
Mani Hart-Deville was mauled by what authorities believe was a great white shark while surfing at Wilsons Headland off Wooli Beach near Grafton, N.S.W. As the creature made multiple passes at the teen surfer, fellow beachgoers tried to fend it off, according to news.com.au.
Hart-Deville who’d suffered ‘grave injuries to his legs’ was brought to shore, where despite various efforts at CPR was unable to be revived.
The year 10 student who attended South Grafton High School was declared dead at the scene. The attack is reported to have occurred just before 2.30p.m, Saturday afternoon.
‘What’s happened there this afternoon would shake everybody,’ Jim Simmons, the mayor of nearby Clarence Valley, said in a statement, reported by The Guardian. ‘It’s terribly shocking. All of our sympathies, from people in the area, go out to the boy’s family.’
Friends and family are paying tribute to a 15-year-old boy who died after being attacked by a shark on the New South Wales north coast. Fellow surfers and paramedics worked on Mani Hart-Deville but his leg injuries were too severe. https://t.co/G7v8QKGFUj #7NEWS pic.twitter.com/tewJXzWlc8
— 7NEWS Brisbane (@7NewsBrisbane) July 11, 2020
‘probably a two-and-a-half (8 ft) meter white pointer’
Offered, local resident Helen Dobra, ‘Basically, he said that he was in the water and a really big great white shark came up and took a bite, and he was screaming out.’
‘Then the surfer said the shark came again for another attack … and another surfer actually bravely went and tried to get the shark off him and then they pulled him out of the water.’
Officers were seen loading a white surfboard with a bite mark into the back of a police car.
‘The information we have, it’s quite probably a two-and-a-half meter white pointer,’ Surf Lifesaving NSW’s Peter Sweetman told press.
‘Although they won’t know that until they’ve done forensic testing on the surfboard.’
Tributes for Hart-Deville have flowed on social media as beaches in the area remain closed while investigators continue to search for the shark.
It remained unclear if there had been any recent shark sightings in the area and what warnings, advisories, if any, were made.
