Even as the words “shark attack” pierced the calm air at the remote beach, it took a moment for Thomas Williams to realize what was happening.
But then he saw the woman being carried out of the water on a surfboard, then the blood. And in that split second, Williams’ training kicked in.
Williams, a 29-year-old from San Clemente who recently passed his EMT training test, and a handful of others jumped into action when a woman was attacked by a shark at San Onofre State Beach Saturday evening.
“It was definitely to the point, her hamstring was gone,” said Williams a few hours after the attack late Saturday. “If she didn’t receive immediate care, it was life-threatening.”
“All of the back of her leg was kind of missing.”
The shark attack happened at 6:24 p.m. The victim – identified by friends and news outlets as Leeanne Ericson – was airlifted from San Onofre by Mercy Air-5 to Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla, according to Camp Pendleton spokesperson Sgt. Asia Sorenson.
The extent of the victim’s injuries is unknown. The San Onofre, San Clemente state beaches and San Clemente city beach were closed through Sunday and expected to remain closed through Monday. . Lifeguards will re-evaluate opening beaches on Tuesday morning. Water off Camp Pendleton will be closed until Wednesday.
On Sunday morning, a sign at the kiosk entering San Onofre surf beach warned of the ocean closure, and a ranger said the area from south of trails to T-street was closed for the day, though many surfers were still out in the water at nearby Lower Trestles, one of the area’s best surf spots, just north of where the attack occurred.
In the area near the shark attack incident, military guards were stopping people from entering, only allowing people in the campsite access to the sand. Bright red signs reading “Shark Warning Keep Out … Water activity prohibited in this area” lined the sand.
Dave Flynn, spokesperson for Scripps Memorial Hospital, said he could not confirm the shark attack and could not give out any information on a patient’s status because of privacy laws.
State Parks aide Travis Lara said four people were in the water at the surf spot called “Church,” also referred casually by surfers as “Churches,” just north of the San Onofre surf beach and the Southern California Edison nuclear power plant, in front of Camp Pendleton campgrounds. The beach, popular with Orange County surfers, is in northern San Diego County.
A female, who was wearing swim fins and wading in the water, was bit on her “glute and down her thigh,” he said.
The beach along San Onofre is rocky, so it was no easy task for two surfers who put the woman on a surfboard, trying to navigate the slippery boulders that line the water’s edge while quickly getting her to shore.
That’s when Williams, Hunter Robinson, Grant Parker and Wade Nevitt rushed over to help.
Robinson, a longtime surfer, suggested using a surf leash as a tourniquet to stop the bleeding.
Williams did a quick assessment of the situation: She was conscious and talking. He asked her questions, like if she knew her age, and she was able to answer.
Blood, while there was a lot of it, was not squirting out – which means an artery was not hit. That was a good thing.
“If the artery had been hit, it’s a lot harder to control,” he said.
“She was not calm, of course,” he said. “But she was coherent.”
Then, he used the surf leash, to help stop the bleeding. The injury to her leg was on the right side.
“I wrapped it around and held it until we got on shore where a couple of friends applied towels for direct pressure.”
He said Camp Pendleton medics showed up on the scene.
“I’m glad to see the training I received, after I took in the initial panic of what was going on, that I could kind of assess the situation so I could respond accordingly,” he said. “If any one of us weren’t there it would have been so much worse.”
News spread as beachgoers attempted to get to San Onofre but were instructed to stay out of the water after the attack.
Beachgoer Amber Booth, of San Clemente, was headed to San Onofre to watch the sunset with her family when the ranger told her the ocean water was closed because of the shark attack.
Booth, who surfs San Onofre often, said the news made her worry about her daughter, Angelina, 8, who boogie boards often in the area.
“There’s so many kids in the water at San O,” she said. “You don’t really want to think about it when you’re out in the water.”
There have been two videos that have surfaced lately of sharks breaching out of the water near surfers, one at Lower Trestles and another at Upper Trestles, both just north of the attack site.
A video surfaced last week of an estimated 16-foot great white feasting on a dead whale off the Dana Point coastline.
Nearby, Trails at San Onofre State Beach is known to have resident great white sharks who have lived there for years – some locals dubbed them “Fluffy and Bumper.” And though the area is known as a nursing ground for great whites during spring months, experts and long-time lifeguards say there’s been an uptick in shark activity, especially closer to shore, in recent years in the Orange County area.
Chris Lowe, director of the Shark Lab at California State University, Long Beach believes El Nino could have kept sharks around the area in recent years, and his team has tagged several great white sharks that were living in the Surfside Beach area two years ago.
Earlier this year, several great white sharks were caught and released from the Huntington Beach area, two from the pier and one from shore in Sunset Beach.
Just a few weeks ago, an area of San Clemente beach near the pier was under shark advisory when a shark was spotted by lifeguard trainees in the shorebreak.
The latest attack comes nearly one year after swimmer Maria Korcsmaros was attacked off Corona del Mar last Memorial Day. Based on her bite marks, which spanned across her chest, down her hip and over her shoulder, experts estimate the shark was at least 10-feet in length.
Shark expert Lowe said while it’s unknown what kind of shark attacked, there’s likely only two shark species in that area that could have caused the injury: a great white or a seven-gill shark.
“Those are the only two species I can think of that are capable of inflicting that kind of wound,” Lowe wrote via e-mail.
Williams is eager to hear if the victim is healing.
“We all just want to make sure she’s doing OK. We just want to hear some update on whether she’s stable or alive,” he said. “We just want to know if she’s alright.”
Williams, who just took up surfing recently, said he and his friends planned on surfing San Onofre surf beach but changed their minds to go on the base instead. They brought their surfboards, but with strong winds whipping, they decided to hang out on the sand instead.
“We all kind of talked about it, everything kind of happens for a reason,” he said. “We were just thankful there was enough people there at the right time.”
When asked if the incident would keep him out of the ocean, he said he’s still willing to take his chances out in the water.
“The probability of it happening is pretty slim,” he said. “I don’t think it deters anything. I think it’s the risk you take when you get into any kind of environment.”
