How this braveheart saved 13-yr-old cousin from a shark

In an incident that could be straight out of a movie, 33-year old Syb Mundy yesterday literally rescued his 13-year old cousin from the jaws of death off Tasmania's east coast.

How this braveheart saved 13-yr-old cousin from a shark

anything for the family: Syb Mundy is so glad his cousin won't lose her leg

The teenager, Hannah Mighali, a junior life saver with a love for the ocean, was surfing with her cousin when the shark grabbed her by the leg and dragged her underwater twice.

"She just flew up in the air and got dragged under the shark had given her a nudge and she disappeared," Mundy said later.

"I was about five to 10 metres away. She came back up and went down a few times and I saw the shark come up out of the water.

"I paddled over to try to get as close as I could to try to stick my thumb in its eye but I missed and we were just hitting it on the head.

The shark released Hannah's badly bitten leg Mundy does not know why.

"I don't think we had anything to do with it we were just powerless against it, it was such an intense creature," he said. "I think it just didn't like the taste of her. It then took off with her surfboard and dragged her under again. She's lucky she didn't lose her leg."

Blood everywhere

Mundy says Hannah came free once more, perhaps when the leg rope attaching her to her board snapped.
"When she got free I said 'You've got to jump on my back and not let go.'

"She climbed up on my back, but there was that much blood in the water I didn't really know ... whether she could stay awake on my back. We started paddling. The shark was behind us. Then it was underneath us.
"We just stopped and tried to face it so we could slap it again. "The shark continued to circle," said Mundy.

"There was a wave coming and I said to Hannah, 'This wave is going to save our lives'. But as I was paddling I looked to the left and the shark started surfing the wave with us. We were freaking out a bit."

Witnesses said the shark pursued the two into the shallows. On the beach, locals used a surfboard leg rope as a tourniquet to stop the flow of blood from Hannah's lower right leg.

Mundy did not believe the shark should be killed. "We're in their territory, they're not in ours," he said, after being hailed as hero by local police.

He said later neither he nor his cousin had been able to sleep. "Every time I shut my eyes, I see it (the shark)."
Hannah was in stable condition yesterday even though her leg had been bitten to the bone.

"She's been in pretty good spirits," her father said.

""But she had trouble sleeping: every time she shuts her eyes she sees you know what," he said.

Punching shark

In a separate incident, 24-year old snorkeller Steven Fogarty punched at an attacking bull shark, who grabbed him from behind in 2m water at the entrance to the mouth of Lake Illawarra, on the New South Wales coast yesterday morning.

"I was just cruising down the lake with the running tide ... and something just grabbed me", Fogarty, a waterfront worker, said after receiving treatment for about 40 puncture wounds to his right calf.

"My first instinct was to throw punches.

"I just started swinging I think I got one on him," he said after swimming to a sand bank where he was picked up by a passing boat.

Sharks are often found close to the shore in the warm waters around the length of the Australian eastern seaboard in the summer months.

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