Woman attacked by shark at Coogee beach wakes briefly from coma to say three words

By Achol Arok and AAP • June 24, 2026 • Environment

‘I love you,’ Leah Stewart told her mother and partner after being extubated on Tuesday

A woman attacked by a shark at Sydney’s Coogee beach has uttered her first words after waking from a coma 10 days after sustaining her injuries. “I love you,” Leah Stewart told her mother and partner after being extubated on Tuesday. She was bitten by a great white shark on 13 June. Stewart has had five days of surgeries – including an arm amputation – with more to come, her brother Josh Stewart wrote on a fundraising page. “After a week of life-support and repeat surgeries, doctors were able to extubate Leah and reduce her level of sedation to bring her out of the induced coma for a short period of time,” he wrote. “Her first thoughts were with her daughter … and wanted to check she was OK. “This is a lot faster than anyone expected, and for us this feels like a miracle and is everything so many of us have hoped and prayed for over the past week.” Stewart, a 34-year-old teacher who is a mother to a one-year-old girl, remains in intensive care. A fundraiser page set up to fund her medical procedures and aid her family has garnered more than $488,000 in donations. While she remains in hospital, tensions regarding sharks off Sydney’s coast are running high. A drone video circulating on social media showed what appeared to be a shark close to shore at Bondi beach on Wednesday morning. The operator suggested it was a great white and one had also been spotted on Tuesday. The beach was closed by lifeguards, the New South Wales Shark Smart app posted at 9am on Wednesday. NSW’s primary industries department separately confirmed a tiger shark was detected at Bondi on Tuesday afternoon, having been tagged at Maroubra earlier that day. Bondi was also briefly closed on Sunday due to a shark sighting. ‘We should be world-leading’ Stewart’s attack reignited calls to cull shark populations to protect swimmers, but the NSW premier, Chris Minns, has said great whites could not be targeted as the species was protected. The premier on Wednesday said NSW would soon roll out “world-leading” shark drones across more of the state’s beaches. “We’ll be using technology that’s available, but hasn’t been rolled out at scale anywhere in the world, not in California, not in Florida, not in Johannesburg, places where you’ve got developed world economies, large tourism populations and sharks,” Minns said. “We’ll be first.” The premier said there would be an announcement “soon”, including the cost and how Surf Life Saving NSW would operate the system. The Civil Aviation Safety Authority has granted a temporary exemption for aerial surveillance of Coogee beach after the attack on Stewart. The beach is about 8km from Sydney airport. Shark nets, which are temporarily removed during the winter whale migration season, were due to be reinstalled at the start of September.

Source: The Guardian