{"id":492680,"date":"2026-06-24T04:14:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T04:14:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/492680\/"},"modified":"2026-06-24T04:14:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T04:14:13","slug":"sydney-shark-victims-first-words-as-fight-for-life-continues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/492680\/","title":{"rendered":"Sydney shark victim’s first words as fight for life continues"},"content":{"rendered":"

A young mother mauled by a shark<\/a> has briefly regained consciousness after more than a week in a coma and spoken her emotional first words.<\/p>\n

“I love you,” Leah Stewart told her mother and partner after being extubated on Tuesday, 10 days after she was bitten by a great white shark<\/a> on June 13.<\/p>\n

Stewart had spent a week on life-support and about five days undergoing surgeries \u2013 including an arm amputation \u2013 with still more to come, her brother Josh wrote on a fundraising page.<\/p>\n

“Her first thoughts were with her daughter August and wanted to check she was OK,” he wrote.<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

\"Leah<\/p>\n

Leah Stewart with her daughter August. (Source: Supplied)<\/p>\n

Stewart, a 34-year-old teacher who is a mother to a one-year-old girl, remains in intensive care and was scheduled for another surgery on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

A fundraiser page set up to fund her medical procedures and aid her family has garnered more than AU$488,000 (NZ$596,200) in donations.<\/p>\n

While she remains fighting for her life in hospital, tensions regarding sharks off Sydney’s coast run high.<\/p>\n

A drone video circulating on social media showed what appeared to be a shark close to shore at the famous Bondi Beach.<\/p>\n

NSW’s Primary Industries department confirmed a tiger shark was detected at Bondi on Tuesday afternoon, having been tagged at Maroubra earlier that day.<\/p>\n

Stewart’s attack reignited calls to cull shark populations to protect swimmers, but NSW Premier Chris Minns said the great white shark population cannot be targeted as it is protected.<\/p>\n

The Civil Aviation Safety Authority has granted a temporary exemption for aerial surveillance of Coogee Beach in the wake of the attack.<\/p>\n

The beach is about 8km from Sydney Airport.<\/p>\n

Shark nets, which are temporarily removed during the winter whale migration season, will be reinstalled at the start of September.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A young mother mauled by a shark has briefly regained consciousness after more than a week in a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":492681,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[85,42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-492680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-australia","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=492680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492680\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/492681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=492680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=492680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=492680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}