50-year-old swimmer describes shark attack near San Diego
Lyn Jutronich was resting during her morning ocean swim when something rammed her hard out of the water.
Jutronich, 50, said she immediately knew it was a shark. She gave her first interviews over the weekend from her hospital bed, where she is recovering after the shark bit her leg Friday as she swam off the coast of Del Mar, north of San Diego.
“I felt a huge, like a really hard hit right, I don’t know how else to say this, like right between my legs, and it pushed me. It hurt, and it pushed me up and out of the water,” Jutronich described to ABC news affiliate KGTV.
“I saw it clamp on my leg, so I don’t know if I saw it bite my leg or if I saw it after it bit my leg, but I definitely saw the mouth,” she recalled.
Still clamped onto her right leg, the shark shook her once, “kind of like a dog,” she said.
Then it let her go.
This Malibu photographer captures images of great white sharks along the Southern California coast, many just feet from unknowing swimmers and surfers.
A friend saw her being flung around in the water, then saw the shark’s fin. He helped her get back to shore, where lifeguards and emergency crews treated her, then rushed her to a hospital.
She is being treated for puncture and laceration wounds to her upper right thigh.
The shark is believed to have been a juvenile white, but officials are waiting for scientists to confirm that. Juvenile white sharks often swim off Del Mar’s shoreline.
Jutronich told reporters she is still processing what happened.
Start your day right
Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
