Shark bite like 'grip of red-hot vice’

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32846, 21 February 1972, Page 13

Shark bite like 'grip of red-hot vice’

(N.Z Press Assn.—Copyright) MELBOURNE, Feb. 20. “I felt its jaws on my leg like a red-hot vice,” Mr Robert Richards, aged 24, who lost an arm and a leg when attacked by a shark in Mozambique six weeks ago, said in Swan Hill Hospital, Melbourne, yesterday. Mr Richards, an Australian, was on holiday in South Africa and was on a short visit to Mozambique when attacked. He arrived back in Australia on Friday, lying on a stretcher across seats in a Boeing 707 airliner.

The shark bit off his right arm below the elbow and his right leg below the knee.

“It took me straight down. I remember swimming round in circles trying to hit it off. The water was just a sheet of blood all round me,” said Mr Richards.

“I still had my arm then, but as I turned over the shark was right beside me; it just took it off with one bite.

“I remember lying on the beach in a pool of blood and asking them (his friends) to take a colour photograph," he said. "I wanted to send it to the shark research centre in South Africa. But they wouldn't do it.” 24 YARDS OUT He said he was only 24 yards from the beach when the shark struck, and only a short time earlier he and his friends had pitched their tents and then they ran straight into the sea. After the attack, divers began a hunt for the shark.

“I hope they get the thing. It is a killer,” said Mr Richards. Doctors gave him 10 pints of blood after the attack. He said he would return to South Africa after he was fitted with artificial limbs.