The community is reeling after 35-year-old teacher and mother, Leah Stewart, was left in critical condition following a horrific shark attack. Despite swimming within the flags at Coogee Beach, she was targeted by a suspected 3.5-metre great white shark. Leah is currently on life support after undergoing an arm amputation, with her family facing a long, devastating road ahead. My thoughts are with her and her young child during this unimaginable time.

She has large flesh wounds to the leg and the arms that are going to require a lot of surgery,” New South Wales Ambulance inspector Mike Corlis told reporters at Coogee Beach.Ms Stewart was bitten only about 30 metres from shore. “The woman was pulled from the water by members of the public who commenced first ⁠aid,” police said in a statement.

A witness to the attack, Nicola Logan, told Reuters that she saw a “massive pool of blood” in ⁠the water, then “a lady kind of motioning to swim, lots of splashing, and then a ski paddler was out trying to bring her in”.

Paddleboard champion and off-duty lifeguard Charlie Verco, 25, who rescued Ms Stewart and brought her to shore, said he felt “very scared” when he saw the shark circling near the swimmers.

“I started paddling out to see if everything was alright and I could see something in the water,” he told Nine News. “There was a lot of blood in the water, I couldn’t really see what was going on. She popped up and the shark let her go and that was when I got close enough to grab her and put her on my board and take her to shore.”

In the aftermath of the attack, the local Randwick Council closed all beaches in the area for 24 hours. Authorities flew drones overhead under emergency provisions ⁠to scan for sharks.“It’s been a really tough summer of shark activity and shark attacks ​in Sydney ⁠and it’s something that the NSW ‌government is taking really, really seriously,” Tara Moriarty, New South Wales’s agriculture minister, said.