A Deadly Bite

By: Brian Killen
New Rochelle, N.Y.


Lucas Ransom, 19, was killed by a shark last week while body boarding on a Santa Barbara beach, CA.

On October 22, Lucas Ransom and his college roommate, Matt Garcia, were surfing 100 yards outside of the Vandenberg Air Force Base when the shark attacked occurred. Garcia reported to police officers that Ransom was swimmy on his body board when he was pulled under by the shark. He continued to tell police that he saw the color change in the water from blue to red and his board popped up out of the water with a 13 inch bite taken out of it.

"When the shark hit him, he just said, 'Help me, dude!' He knew what was going on," Garcia explained to the press. "It was really fast. You just saw a red wave and this water is blue – as blue as it could ever be – and it was just red, the whole wave."
As the waves continued to break Garcia had a hard time finding his friend who was only 2 feet away from him before the attack occurred. Once he found him he swam him to the shore. Lucas had a severe bite mark on his left leg and was pronounced dead on the shore from large amounts of blood lose. The University of California, Santa Barbara, where the junior was a full-time student, had a severe wound to his left leg and died a short time later at Surf Beach, the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Department said in a statement.

The body board was brought to Federal and state Fish and Game officials where they identified it as a Great White Shark. They were able to discover the shark’s identity due to several teeth fragments which were stuck into the body board. Carrie Wilson, Fish and Game Marine Biologist, stated the shark was estimated 16 to 18 feet and over 4,000 pounds. Also the aggressive shape of the bite gave credit to the Great White Shark’s reputation for being the “Ultimate Predator.”
Wilson also stated, “More people are in the water up and down the coast and we know the sharks are out there looking for food.” “Every once in a blue moon we have these things occur. When you look at the number of people in the water, (the number of attacks is) pretty small. The shark wasn't doing anything sharks don't do. It was just looking for prey.”

Although this doesn’t happen as often as people think, there have been 95 shark attacks on humans on the coast of California in the last 50 years. The last shark on Surf Beach prior to Lucas was in 2008 when a surfer’s board was almost bit in half by a Great White. The surfer was not harmed.
The Great White Shark is known to swim up and down warm water coastlines in search of prey which consists of sea lions and seals. Surfers and body boarders are often confused to be these animals hence the reason shark attacks are becoming a major problem to the water sports.

Surfers and body boarders have to enter the water with caution whenever surfing the waves in California. Ransom’s father stated in an email to friends and family thanking them for their condolences, “He lived real well and he died real well. He was in the water for about 45 minutes before the shark got him and his buddy told us he was getting the rides of his young life, on a day with big swells.”
State officials closed the beach for three days after the deadly attack. No sharks have been seen since the morning of October 22, 2010.


Expand Ur Knowledge