Mother-of-three tells her story from encounter with 9-to-11-foot Great White at San Onofre
Overlooking the calm water of Mission Bay in San Diego, Leeanne Ericson wears a colorful sleeve concealing the missing chunk of flesh from her right thigh, and a custom brace to hold the fragile limb in place. She smiles. “They thought I’d never walk again,” she says, rising from her chair. For the first time since the attack, she slips her mangled wetsuit over the wound, the breezy neon design of the sheath bursting through the jagged teeth marks of neoprene.
Three months, nine weeks in the Intensive Care Unit, and eight surgeries later, Ericson is finally ready to tell the story of her encounter with a 9-to-11-foot great white shark at San Onofre.
On a sunny Saturday in April, Ericson and her boyfriend, Dusty, were enjoying a camping trip at San-O. There were kids, beachside BBQs, and, despite a less-than-decent swell in the water, lots of surfing. With light winds and a low tide, the campers paddled out for an evening session smack dab in the middle of San Onofre State Park’s cluster of surf spots, Church beach.
Ericson, not much of a surfer, grabbed her fins to swim around the lineup. And walking out on the cobblestones, something felt off: “I had a weird feeling about going out that day,” she says.
Even before trudging through the whitewash, they saw two stingrays, and within minutes of waiting for a wave, a large sea lion launched its full body above the surface. That’s when Leeanne swam to Dusty to share his board. “I could tell how scared she was,” recalls Dusty.
As their feet dangled from the board, something passed beneath them and bumped Leeanne. She thought it was her foot touching Dusty’s. It wasn’t.
A set came and Dusty decided to shoo Leeanne off the nose of his board and go for it – “I absolutely regret that” – but he stopped before he caught it.
“As I was paddling, I heard the scream,” he says. “It was a piercing scream I’d never heard. And it disappeared, mid-scream. I turned around as quick as I could and there wasn’t even a ripple. Where the f-ck did she go?”
“As soon as it grabbed my leg,” says Leeanne, “I knew what it was. I remember being pulled down and thinking about my kids. My brain shut off and went into fight or flight mode. I was trying to push the shark off of me. My hands moved down towards the eye and I started digging at it. I felt like I was digging at a cup of jello.”
And the shark let go.
Meanwhile, Dusty had been frantically searching for Leeanne. When he saw the shark thrashing, he swam straight to it without hesitation, thinking, “I’m going to dance with this thing, too. It looked like a feeding frenzy.”
But Leeanne wasn’t there; the shark had dragged her in the opposite direction before continuing on its way. Losing precious moments, Dusty switched course and finally found Leeanne, pulling her onto his board. And when he did, he saw her leg.
For the first time since the attack, Leeanne put on the wetsuit (or what was left of it). Standing beside her is her boyfriend, Dusty, who was there the day of the attack and instrumental in her survival. Photo: Billy Watts
“It looked like a perfect bite out of a watermelon,” he says. “Bone exposed from the hip to the knee. There was nothing there. The amount of blood in the water, the amount of flesh missing from her leg – I thought she was a goner. She had lost most of her blood in the water to the point where the blood she had went to her vital organs to keep her alive. She was completely grey in color, which made her look like she was already dead.”
While the shark thrashed her below the surface, Leeanne swallowed a significant amount of water. And since her own blood and pieces of flesh were floating about, she swallowed some of that, too, as she later discovered in the hospital. With her lungs inundated by liquids, she was “dry drowning,” or a form of non-fatal respiratory impairment.
“I didn’t die, obviously, but I took on a lot of water,” Leanne says. “My lungs were full of water and I had enough room in there to get some air, but I couldn’t take a deep breath. The only thing I kept saying was, ‘I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe.’ I saw the blood from my leg, I knew I was attacked by a shark, but all I cared about was being able to breathe.”
On his 5’10” shortboard, Dusty lugged Leeanne through the whitewater, and soon, a group of guys, including a marine, met the duo in waist-deep water. They tried to tie a tourniquet with Dusty’s leash, but it didn’t catch; there was too much flesh missing at the hip.
Hunter Robinson, one of the first responders, recalled: “The boyfriend did an amazing job, of course, but he was in shock. We folded her leg under her other leg, because it was flopping around. She was really calm, given the circumstances. And she was totally coherent. But I thought she was going to die right there on the board. One of my buddies, Grant [Parker], was just like, ‘f-ck your feet, boys. Let’s go!’ Full-on battle cry.”
Using the board as a stretcher, they dashed across the uneven cobblestones to the parking lot where EMTs were just arriving. From bite to ambulance, the whole incident took 15 minutes. Leeanne was stripped of her wetsuit and driven to a nearby helicopter pad. Before taking off for Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla, they induced a coma. And Dusty was still by her side.
With a seemingly endless spate of recent shark sightings in the Orange County area – an especially large amount near San Onofre – Dusty and Leeanne posit one main reason for her attack. (No, she wasn’t on her period). It was mistaken identity.
The sea lion, which jumped from the water, was the main target. “It was an attack bite,” says Dusty. “It was hunting that sea lion in the water with us. And in the murky water, the shark wasn’t able to identify between surfer or sea lion. It wasn’t a test bite. It wasn’t out of curiosity. This was an attack bite to kill.”
In the hospital, doctors got to work with three surgeries in the first week. With such serious damage, they contemplated amputating the leg. The sciatic nerve, the longest nerve in the body which connects the nervous system to the leg, was completely severed. Without it, the leg is useless. A specialist was called in to reconnect it. Doctors skin-grafted from her left thigh to replace a portion of the wound. And the decision not to amputate turned out to be a good idea – within weeks, Leeanne was able to lift the damaged leg, despite doctors believing she’d never have mobility in it. Although she has limited feeling from her knee down, Leeanne can stand alone with her specialized brace, and she has even taken a few steps.
As a working mother-of-three – four-year-old twins and an 11-year-old – Leeanne’s extensive medical bills have been daunting. She’s been forced into disability, had to give up her apartment, and lost full-time custody of her children. In support of her bills, Leeanne’s mother set up a GoFundMe account, which as of now, has received close to 2,000 donations and $91,000 (the goal is $200k). However, Leeanne said: “My antibiotics alone were like $36,000. I don’t think I’ll ever pay off my bills. I’ll probably die with medical bills still.”
But weighing heavier than bills is the trauma. As a lifelong ocean enthusiast and swimmer, Leeanne’s unsure if she’ll ever look at the water the same: “It’s not this fun place that I remembered it to be.” She’s also wary to let her children swim like she did: “My oldest loves to go out in the water, just like I used to. I don’t want her to, but you can only stop her so much.”
Back in San Diego, three months after her life-altering experience, Leeanne is still reflecting on what happened, on what her life will look like post shark attack. As she and Dusty stroll along the Mission Bay waterfront in her custom wheelchair, Leeanne smiles again. She jokes: “We’re thinking about getting a Ferrari logo put on it.” Leeanne can make light of her situation, sure, but what she really wants is the monotony of everyday life back – making dinner for her kids, having custody of her kids, returning to work, driving in traffic, driving anywhere.
“I know what happened to me was bad,” Leeanne says. “I’m missing a large portion of my leg. But the alternative is not having a leg, or I could be dead. It could’ve gotten Dusty on the way in; instead, he saved my life. It could’ve been worse.”
To support Leeanne Ericson’s recovery, please visit her GoFundMe page.
The damage done to her right thigh was extensive. A brace helps her stand, but Leeanne has a way to go until she is fully mobile on her own. Photo: Billy Watts
Exclusive: Leeanne Ericson’s First Interview Since Shark Attack - Surfline
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