A young woman mauled by a bull shark in Sydney Harbour was saved by a quick-thinking vet who used a tourniquet to stem her bleeding.
Emergency services rushed to a private wharf in Elizabeth Bay at 7.45 pm on Monday to find Lauren O’Neill, 29, with a severe bite to her right leg and suffering major blood loss.
Hero vet Fiona Crago and her wife Georgia, who live on the wharf, heard a shout from the victim.
‘We ran out, my wife’s a vet, she basically bandaged it up… bone’s broken, its pretty hectic actually,’ Georgia said.
Hero vet Fiona Crago (pictured above) applied a tourniquet to the leg of Lauren O’Neill (below), 29, on Monday evening before emergency services arrived on the scene
‘She seems to be OK, she’s in a lot of shock. So am I.
‘We kept her warm, and my wife basically bandaged her up to stop the bleeding.
‘If she got bitten (further) out there, she wouldn’t have survived.’
Ms Crago, who works in a veterinary practice in Bundanoon in NSW’s Southern Highlands, was a lawyer for 30 years before retraining as a vet a decade ago.
A friend of the couple said Ms O’Neill owes them her life.
‘Fiona knew what she was doing tonight if it wasn’t for her and her wife Georgia the poor victim would have died,’ the friend said.
One resident said there was ‘blood everywhere’ (pictured: Ms O’Neill on the wharf)
Ms Crago with her wife Georgia
‘I’m so so proud of them, their deserve an award. That girl got lucky tonight having them home.’
The victim was taken by ambulance to St Vincent’s hospital where she remains in a stable condition.
‘She had serious bleeding. Her injuries are severe,’ a NSW Ambulance spokesman told Daily Mail on Monday night.
More to come.