An American woman has died of injuries sustained in a shark attack in the Bahamas, the State Department said Thursday.
Jordan Lindsey, 21, of Torrance, Calif., was snorkeling with her family during a vacation in the Bahamas when she was attacked by three sharks on Wednesday, the Associated Press reported.
The attack near Rose Island killed Lindsey, AP said, citing Royal Bahamas Police Force Deputy Commissioner Paul Rolle. The island is a small strip of land northeast of Nassau.
The sharks bit Lindsey in the arms, legs and buttocks and detached her right arm, KABC-TV reported. Her family members yelled to warn her about the sharks, KABC said, but she did not hear them in time.
Lindsey was brought to shore and pronounced dead at a hospital, the Bahamas Ministry of Tourism said in a statement. The ministry said another government agency “issued precautionary advisories to the public” in response to the attack.
An investigation into Lindsey’s death is ongoing, the ministry said.
“We can confirm a U.S. citizen in the Bahamas succumbed to her injuries following a shark attack on June 26,” a State Department spokeswoman told The Washington Post in a statement. “Out of respect for her family during this difficult time, we do not have additional information to provide.”
Lindsey was a communication studies major at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, CBS reported. She was a “devoted animal lover and climate change advocate,” university President Timothy Law Snyder said in a statement, according to CBS.
Sharks rarely attack humans and kill them even less frequently. People worldwide reported 130 interactions with sharks in 2018, University of Florida researchers found. Five of those attacks were fatal.
A North Carolina teenager recently lost several fingers and part of her left leg in a shark attack off the state’s coast. Paige Winter, 17, was pulled underwater while she was swimming with her siblings. Her father jumped into the ocean and fought the shark, saving her life.
