Shark attack victim said she dug at shark’s eye to escape
It felt like she was digging out of a cup of Jell-O.
Leeanne Ericson described the moments after a 10-foot shark bit her at San Onofre State Beach on April 29, dragging her under the water’s surface, and how she dug into what she think was the shark’s eye to escape, she told “Good Morning America” in an interview that aired Friday morning.
Ericson has been quiet about the incident, and the GMA interview is her first appearance on camera for the San Diego woman and mother of three.
Her boyfriend, identified only as Dusty, recalled it being “a beautiful day, sun was shining, dolphins were jumping out of the water,” he said.
He held up a tattered wetsuit, a souvenir from that dreadful day meant as a day to celebrate a family member’s birthday.
“That’s all that was left,” he said.
The couple also talked about the incident in detail with surf website Surfline.com.
Ericson, not much of a surfer, grabbed her fins to swim around the lineup. And walking out on the cobblestones, something felt off: “I had a weird feeling about going out that day,” she says in the Surfline.com article.
Even before trudging through the whitewash, they saw two stingrays, and within minutes of waiting for a wave, a large sea lion launched its full body above the surface. That’s when Leeanne swam to Dusty to share his board. “I could tell how scared she was,” Dusty said.
As their feet dangled from the board, something passed beneath them and bumped Leeanne. She thought it was her foot touching Dusty’s.
It wasn’t.
A set came and Dusty decided to shoo Leeanne off the nose of his board and go for it — “I absolutely regret that” — but he stopped before he caught it, the article said.
“As I was paddling, I heard the scream,” he says in the Surfline article. “It was a piercing scream I’d never heard. And it disappeared, mid-scream. I turned around as quick as I could and there wasn’t even a ripple.”
In the GMA interview, Ericson said she felt the shark grab her and pull her down. The single mother thought about her kids and Dusty and then tried to push the shark off her.
“I just started digging. I felt like I was digging a cup of Jell-O,” she said.
That was the shark’s eye, the interviewer asked.
“That’s what we assume,” Dusty said.
He recalled seeing Ericson “completely gray in color that looked like she was already dead.”
In a previous interview by the Orange County Register, a group of people in the water, including a San Clemente man training to be an EMT, recalled trying to save Ericson’s life.
“It was definitely to the point, her hamstring was gone,” said Thomas Williams a few hours after the attack. “If she didn’t receive immediate care, it was life-threatening.”
“All of the back of her leg was kind of missing.”
The incident at Church surf beach off Camp Pendleton was the second major shark attack in a one-year span, with a swimmer bit in 2016 on Memorial Day. Both were lucky to survive, but the two incidents have put a spotlight on sharks in the area as their population increases. Their presence has had an impact on local businesses and sent a wave of fear throughout the surf world.
Ericson spent nine weeks in the Intensive Care Unit and had eight operations. When asked how much it cost to get bit by a shark, she chuckled and said “millions.”
Ericson’s GoFundMe account has raised nearly $100,000.
And the tragedy has brought the couple closer.
“He saved my life,” she said.
The sea lion, which jumped from the water, was the main target, they told Surfline.com.
“It was an attack bite,” says Dusty. “It was hunting that sea lion in the water with us. And in the murky water, the shark wasn’t able to identify between surfer or sea lion. It wasn’t a test bite. It wasn’t out of curiosity. This was an attack bite to kill.”