A 13-year-old boy died on Thursday after he was mauled by a shark at a popular beach on Brazil’s eastern coast, the state government said in a statement.
The attack happened off the coast of Chifre beach in Brazil’s tourist hotspot Pernambuco, the State Committee for Monitoring Shark Incidents (CEMIT) said in a news release.
The boy was taken to hospital but “did not survive his injuries,” CEMIT added.
Dr. Levy Dalton, who treated the victim, said the boy had been bitten on the right thigh, before suffering a cardiorespiratory arrest, UOL Notícias Brasil reported.
“Unfortunately, we were unable to resuscitate him, (…) unfortunately we couldn’t do much for him,” Dalton told reporters, according to the outlet.
Brazilian outlet G1 identified the victim as Deivson Rocha Dantas. According G1, the boy’s cousin, Lídia Emanuele, told TV Globo that the shark “ate almost his entire leg” and he was pulled out of the water by other beachgoers who were about the same age.
Dozens of beaches along the turquoise coastlines of Pernambuco have been issued with shark warnings, authorities said, adding that Chifre beach had issued four such signs for beachgoers.
Nonetheless, CEMIT said it would beef up shark monitoring following the boy’s death and bring back a suspended program to track the creatures with microchips.
CEMIT
More than 80 shark attacks have been recorded in Pernambuco since 1992, with 26 of them fatal, excluding the boy who died on Thursday, CEMIT said.
Last week, a 12-year-old boy who was bitten by a shark in Australia’s Sydney Harbor died of his injuries, his family said.
Earlier this month, a 56-year-old woman from Minnesota died after a shark attack in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
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