The body of the triathlete killed in a shark attack off the California coast has been recovered a week after she vanished while swimming with her husband, according to reports.
Erica Fox’s corpse was found Saturday afternoon still clad in her black wetsuit south of Davenport Beach in Santa Cruz on Saturday — about 25 miles from where she was last seen, her heartbroken husband said.
Jean-Francis Vanreusel was swimming just about one hundred yards behind his wife with 13 other members of a local swimming club on Dec. 21 when a shark dragged his wife of 30 years into the water, he told Mercury News.
Witnesses reported seeing a shark with a human body in its jaws before it submerged, a Coast Guard official said, ABC News reported.
“She didn’t want to live in fear,” Vanreusel told Mercury News during a solemn procession along the coast line on Sunday, marking her last mile-long swim with dozens of Kelp Krawlers club members.
“She lived her life fully.”
Vanreusel said Fox, 55, was found still wearing a “shark band” on her ankle. The electromagnetic device is meant to ward off sharks like the one that killed her.
Her tragic death is the second fatal shark attack at Lovers Point in 73 years, and the first since a 17-year-old boy was killed in Dec. 1952, according to Mercury News.
It’s also the second attack on a Kelp Krawler member, which Fox co-founded, in just three-and-a-half years after Steve Bruemmer was bitten on the leg — and only survived after he was rescued by nearby paddle boarders.
”Will people get back in the ocean? Will they get back in the ocean, but not here?” wondered Sharen Carey, who has been swimming with the Kelp Krawlers for more than a decade.
“I don’t think anyone knows at the moment, because I think we’re all just still in shock, disbelief and grief, not knowing what we need to do next, except to love and support each other.”
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