14 DAY TRIAL // A 20-year-old visitor to Maui has had her arm severed during a shark attack on Wednesday afternoon, August 14. The woman came to Maui from Germany as part of a group of visitors.
KITV wrote that the attack took place at Palauea beach in Makena and the woman could be heard crying out.
She had gone snorkeling at the beach with two of her friends, but they were not by her side when the shark bit her.
“I heard a scream like I’d never heard before. [...] I told everyone around me that a scream like that could only mean a shark attack,” witness Andree Conley-Kapoi recalls.
Conley-Kapoi was kayaking when he heard the unnamed woman yell out. Her friends were also in the area and they were swimming. They hurried to help her once hearing her yell out.
When they got to her, her arm had been bitten off. However, she has survived the attack and she is now in stable condition.
Officials have closed down beaches from Makena State Park to Keawaula after the incident. Just one day before, on Tuesday, another shark bit a kite board.
The board was floating near Ka'a point at Kanaha Beach Park on Maui. Board owner Morgan Flannery was on the shore after experiencing difficulty in the water. She witnessed the shark take more than one bite out of the board.
“It went at it [the board] a couple times, like three or four, and it totally submerged it a couple of time. [...] Very thankful that it was the board and not me,” Flannery detailed of the moment she saw it bite.
“I felt very lucky because I came right through that same path that the board came through ... so I am very thankful today,” she adds.