A Californian tourist was killed in a suspected shark attack in Hawaii this weekend.
It was the sixth shark attack there this year.
The 65-year-old male victim was spotted in distress early Saturday while swimming about 60 yards from shore near the Kaanapali Shores resort in Maui, officials said.
Rescuers raced him to shore on a jet ski and performed CPR, but the unidentified tourist — who witnesses say lost his left leg in the attack — could not be saved.
“He looked unconscious when they transferred him to the other gurney,” witness Allison Keller told Hawaii News Now.
“As we got closer, I saw some blood on his stomach, and then I got looking a little bit more, and … it looked like the skin on his wrist was just torn off.
“And then I got looking closer, and his entire left leg from his knee down was just missing. There was no blood or anything.”
Hawaii’s Division of Conservation and Resources Enforcement, or DOCARE, confirmed the man’s age but did not release his name or where he was from in California.
Keller told Hawaii News Now the victim had been on vacation with his wife.
Hawaii’s Division of Aquatic Resources, which tracks shark attacks there, reported six people have been injured already this year compared to just three in all of 2018.
The last fatal shark attack in Hawaii was in April 2015, when a snorkeler was killed off Maui.
The species of shark suspected to be involved in Saturday’s attack was not confirmed, although tiger sharks are most commonly responsible, according to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.
“In an island state that’s surrounded by water, human and shark conflicts do occur from time to time,” DOCARE official Jason Redulla told ABC News Radio.
“There is always the potential for conflict between animal and human, and we just have to be aware of that and respect that.”



