- Arthur Medici, 26, died on Saturday after being attacked by a shark while boogie boarding at Newcomb Hollow Beach in Wellfleet, Massachusetts.
- Medici's death marked the state's first fatal shark attack in 82 years.
- It was the second attack on Cape Cod in two weeks, which experts attribute to a rising seal population.
A 26-year-old engineering student died on Saturday after being attacked by a shark while boogie boarding at a Cape Cod beach.
Arthur Medici was body surfing with his future brother-in-law, Isaac Rocha, when he was bitten and dragged under the water by what is believed to be a great white shark.
"I just saw him go down under the water and he popped back up really quick and I saw a lot of blood in the water already and he was screaming," Rocha told CBS News.
"And then I saw like a shark tail or something like a part of a shark and I swam to him as fast as I could in that moment and I got to him, I dragged him back to shore about 35-to-40 yards," Rocha added. "When I got to shore I was exhausted. I couldn’t bring him more up the shore. I fell down and I was still carrying him. I got a boogie board strap and I tied it around his thigh to try to stop the bleeding."
Bystanders met the two men at the shore and helped fashion a better tourniquet with a dog's leash.
They then carried him toward the parking lot, but had to stop halfway there because he had stopped breathing and they began CPR.
Paramedics met them on the beach soon after and Medici was rushed to Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis, where he was pronounced dead.
Medici was from Brazil and a GoFundMe campaign has been started to help raise money to send his body back to his home country. As of Monday afternoon, the fund had raised more than $29,000.
Medici's aunt, Marisa Medici, told the Boston Herald that he moved to the US about four years ago. He was studying part time to become a medical engineer at Bunker Hill Community College, while working at a pizzeria in Boston.
He had been with his fiancée for two years, and she is taking his death hard.
"They were thinking about marriage and all that. It's horrible," friend Isaac Rocha told WCVB.
Medici's father took to Facebook after his son's death, and wrote that "God has taken the reason of my life."
Shark sightings around Cape Cod are on the rise
Medici's death marks Massachusetts' first fatal shark attack since 1936. It was the second shark attack this summer.
On August 15, New York doctor Bill Lytton, 61, was attacked by a shark at a beach less than five miles north of where Medici was killed. Lytton continues to recover from his injuries at a Boston hospital.
"After two attacks, I think we can be concerned that it's a dangerous situation," Lytton told CBS News after Medici's death.
Shark sightings have been on the rise on Cape Cod's Atlantic-facing beaches for the past several years, thanks to a rebounding seal population that draws great white sharks to the Massachusetts coast.
"Unfortunately (Medici) was in an area where the shark was hunting," Gregory Skomal, state Division of Marine Fisheries shark researcher, told the Cape Cod Times. "When they strike with a ferocity of this nature, they believe what they are eating is an aggressive seal that can fight back."
Wellfleet beaches were closed to swimming following Medici's death. It's unclear when they will reopen.
In order to avoid an encounter with a shark, swimmers should heed the following rules, according to Cape Cod Today:
- Don't swim near seals
- Swim close to shore where your feet can touch the bottom
- Enter the water in groups
- Avoid swimming alone at dawn or dusk
- Limit splashing
- Don't wear shiny jewelry
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