ESCAPES FROM GRIP OF A KILLER
Lewis, remembered: “She wasn’t even really bleeding anymore, by that point she had really lost all of her blood. She was just completely pale white”
Another, Justine Myers, says: “I lifted up her leg at one point and my first thought was that there was a chance her leg would come off.”
And Dusty, too, thought she wouldn’t make it.
“She was a completely grey colour that looked like she was already dead,” he says. “I never told her I’d loved her until then.” Leeanne says: “It was the first time he’d ever told me that.
“And I was thinking, ‘of all the times, this is the time you picked to tell me you love me?’ But at least if I had died I would have heard it.”
Leeanne spent nine weeks in intensive care, undergoing eight surgeries, blood transfusions and skin grafts.
Despite her miraculous escape, she had to teach herself to walk again and still has no feeling in her injured leg.
DENVER Struwig and wife Kristy were just home from their honeymoon when they decided to celebrate with a surf.
As he waited to catch a last wave off South Africa’s Chintsa beach, what is believed to be a great white struck.
Speaking about that day in September 2011, Denver, 37, says: “I was sitting there and this shark comes underneath. As I put my legs down the shark hit me.
“It grabbed the back of my shoulder and the front of my abdomen before swimming down to the seabed with me. I
She says: “Most of my hamstring and my glutes are gone, my quad is gone, pretty much everything has gone. They took skin from my left leg to close the wounds on my right.
“There’s no cushion over my hip joint any more so I can only lay on my side for so long, sit for so long, stand for so long.
“But I thank God that I didn’t lose my leg, or my life.”
Sharkfest is on National Geographic WILD until Sunday, July 26.
ALL A-BOARD FOR FUN Denver, left, Kristy & pal
SURVIVOR Marjorie
NIGHT fell on Hawaii’s Oahu Island as Brazilian Marjorie Mariano came face to face with a 15-foot tiger shark, which shook her in its jaws.
The dancer had gone for a sunset surf on New Year’s Eve in 2017 to honour her best friend, murdered a month earlier.
The 56-year-old “surfaholic” said: “I turned to catch a wave and my life changed in seconds. I didn’t see a fin, I didn’t see a shadow.
“Suddenly I felt something really hard on my leg. It was like ‘boom’, I was in a shark’s jaws Somehow my body reacted to pull it away. But when I turned, I faced the shark as it was biting my leg.
“It was eye to eye. I felt that I was looking into his soul. I was worried, feeling ‘I’m on my own’.”
The shark suddenly vanished and fellow surfers helped Marjorie to shore and called an ambulance.
The bite, from the back of her knee to her upper thigh, was so severe that doctors thought they would have to amputate, but were able to save her leg.
Marjorie said: “It’s good to look back and see that I passed from death to life again, I survived.”