He is my hero, says wife saved after husband punched shark
A SCOTS mother whose husband saved her life by punching a 9ft shark has told of her terror as it almost severed her foot.
Frankie Gonsalves, 40, was snorkelling with husband Dean near the shore of Ascension Island, a British territory about 1,000 miles off the west coast of Africa, when she was savaged by the Galapagos shark.
Speaking for the first time since the attack last month, the senior social worker said: ‘I owe my life to Dean. Were it not for his quick thinking, I would have been dragged to my death.
‘One minute everything was calm. I was swimming in clear, blue water off a beautiful white sandy beach, with the children paddling nearby. The next I suddenly saw a huge mass of grey out of the corner of my eye. Just as I realised it was a massive shark, I felt its jaws clamp on my ankle.
‘I managed to shout to Dean as I was being pulled deeper into the seawater,
‘We feel incredibly lucky to be alive’ ‘It was like hitting a metal bar’
shaken from side to side. My body went into such severe shock that as the shark bit me I didn’t even feel the pain.’
Her 40-year-old husband, who runs a company that fits fire alarms, repeatedly punched the shark in the face as shocked bystanders helped his wife to the shore. He made it out just in time as, attracted by Mrs Gonsalves’s blood, piranhas began to circle.
The couple, now back at their home in Ealing, west London, with children Katie, 11, and Louis, seven, had been living on the island of St Helena – part of the same British overseas territory as Ascension – where they intend to return.
They were around 50ft out from the water’s edge when the attack happened on April 21. While there were signs warning about the tide, there was no mention of sharks.
Mr Gonsalves said: ‘I didn’t think about being attacked myself. I swam over and dived under the water. Then I punched the shark between the eyes. The shark seemed stunned because it let go of Frankie’s leg.’
His wife, who was born in Bishopbriggs, near Glasgow, did not realise at first how serious her injuries were – but the shark had bitten through several tendons and she almost lost her foot.
She has now had four operations and is expected to recover fully. Mr Gonsalves said: ‘Every fibre in my body told me to turn round and simply swim for my life.
‘But I instinctively knew that would be disastrous as I could never outswim a shark. So I turned round, treading water and frantically back-pedalling so I could see where the shark was, while at the same time desperately trying to get back to shore.
‘The shark was swimming towards me and I punched it again on its head. I was shocked at how hard it felt. It was like hitting a metal bar with sandpaper over it.’
As it came back a third and fourth time, he hit it again. Meanwhile, a bystander who knew first aid stemmed the bleeding from Mrs Gonsalves’s injured leg with towels.
‘I don’t intend to let what happened put me off swimming in the sea again,’ she said.
‘After all, to be attacked by a shark is incredibly rare. Neverthe- less, we both feel incredibly lucky to be alive – and Dean is now known as not only my husband but my hero.’
After the attack, Mrs Gonsalves’s father, Irving Benjamin, said it was ‘scary’ to think how close he had come to losing a child.
The 70-year-old former surgeon and professor at King’s College Hospital London said his son-inlaw had phoned him after the attack in which his daughter was ‘savaged’ and ‘severely injured’.
He said: ‘We don’t know how big the shark was but Dean is a hero to us. What he did was heroic.
‘Being a retired surgeon I understood the injuries and it was reassuring because I know that she could have been bitten in worst places.’