‘The young female jumped in to swim nearby the dolphins’
A teenager who was jet skiing on a river in western Australia was killed by a shark after reportedly jumping into the water to swim with a pod of dolphins on Saturday.
The 16-year-old girl was attacked in Perth’s Swan River, near the old Fremantle traffic bridge, in what was the first fatal shark attack in the area in nearly a century.
WA Police Acting Fremantle District inspector Paul Robinson said authorities believed the teen was jet skiing on the river with friends around 3.20pm when she jumped into the water to swim with a pod of dolphins, the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) reported.
Her friends witnessed the attack.
Robinson said the Perth teen was pulled from the water but died at the scene, despite efforts to revive her.
“It’s an extremely traumatic event for everyone involved and everyone who knew the young girl, so I won’t be going into the extent of the injuries,” he said.
“It is unusual for a shark to be that far down the river … at this point in time an alert has been put out, a shark warning just to let people know this incident has taken place.”
Robinson told reporters during a news conference: “It’s very early on, what we’re being advised is that she was with friends on the river.
“They were on jet skis. Possible a pod of dolphins were being seen nearby and the young female jumped in to swim nearby the dolphins.”
Robinson said the girl’s family were “absolutely devastated by the news”.
A witness to the incident, Joshua, 16, told the SMH: “There were about seven of us and we were on the rope swing for around an hour or two.
“We saw the dolphins, there were dolphins there. When all the police came by we thought we were in trouble.”
Joshua said police passed the group but did not say anything “which is kind of worrying as after this had happened we were still jumping off the rope swim”.
It is the second shark attack in the Swan River since 14 January 2021. At the time, it was the first shark attack in the Swan River in more than 50 years.
In February last year, 35-year-old British diving instructor, Simon Nellist, was attacked off Sydney’s Little Bay Beach, the first such attack in the country’s largest city since 1963.
Related links:
- Woman attacked by shark off UK coast only has nice things to say about her attacker
- Swimmer bitten by a shark off the coast of Britain
- Cruise ship passenger who fell overboard swam with sharks for 20 hours
