ATTACKED BY SHARKS

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 27, 1 February 1924, Page 3

ATTACKED BY SHARKS

BOY TORN TO DEATH

GALLANT RESCUE ATTEMPT FAILS.

(FBOK OCR OWN CORRSIPOKDENT.)

SYDNEY, 24th January. Fearfully torn by a shark, which gripped him while h;e was standing waistdeep in the water,' a boy of 16, named Charles Brown, bled to death in the Parramatta River last Saturday. Almost all the flesh was ripped from his left side, and his right hand was'badly bitten in his unavailing struggle to ?ree himself from,the monster.

With Walter Cocks, aged 17, of Granville, young Brown went to the Parramatta lliver, near the asbestos works at Camellia, for a swim at 4 p.m. The two boys got into their swimming costumes on the bank, and were about to enter the water when Cocks hung back. "I'm not going into the river," he said. "It looks too dangerous to me." And so he went across to a nearby waterhole, and dived in there. It was a few minutes later that Cocks was horrified to hear a piercing scream from the -river. It was iollowed by a despairing cry of, "Oh, held me, help me, Wally." Oockg tore across to the river bank: Standing waist-deep in the water, and only a few yards away, his mate was struggling in the jaws of a shark. The monster seemed to have had hold of Brown's left aide, and he was endeavouring to punch it away with his right hand. In doing so his hand became caught jn the shark's mouth, and before he could drag it away it had been badly bitten. It was the splashing, that Brown made in his frantic endeavours to get free that eventually alarmed the shark! Releasing its victim, it glided away, just as Cocks leapt in to the assistance of his mate. He dragged Brown to the bank, but too late to save him. He had died in the water a few secends after the shark had released him.

"We went to ihe river together," said Cocks, describing the tragedy, "but I decided to swim in a waterhole a few yards away. ,We both undressed and got into bur bathing costumes. Charlie went into the river, and I went over to ths bank of the waterhols. A few minutes later I heard Charlie cry out. I rushed back and saw him splashing the water. He was- only a few feet out. I jumped in and* brought him to the bank. As ■we reached the shore the shark made another rush. at us, but we got away before he got close enough to bite again. After I got Charlie onlto the bank I could see the shark swimming about in the river. It was about eight to ten feet long."

Cocks said that he thought Brown died just as he pulled him up on to the bank. / j ■