‘I could feel the warm, gushing blood’: O.C. shark bite victim describes attack

As shark sightings continued to close Orange County beaches this week, a woman who was bitten by a shark off the coast last month described to the media what happened.

Maria Korcsmaros, a 52-year-old personal trainer and aerobics instructor from Corona, was severely bitten by a shark on May 29 and has spent the last several days recovering.

“It just felt like piercing teeth and I was like, ‘Oh, my God, I think that was a shark.” she told KTLA -TV in an interview. “When it bit down, it encountered my ribs and my pelvis and it wasn’t able to puncture any major organs because of that,.”

Speaking to the Orange County Register, she added: “I could feel the warm, gushing blood, but I couldn’t breathe. I knew my arm was still there because I could feel the tourniquet around it.

Doctors say she’s expected to make a full recovery, crediting her exceptional physical fitness..

Korcsmaros had multiple tooth marks on her right side, extending from her shoulder in a semicircular pattern to her lower pelvis. She also had lacerations on her right arm, an open chest wound and multiple rib fractures and had lost about a liter of blood, doctors said.

Korcsmaros is recovering at the hospital and taking antibiotics to help stave off any infection.

Korcsmaros, a mother of three, is a seasoned athlete who has competed in various triathlons, including an Ironman competition in 2008.

For the second day in a row, two miles of beaches in Orange County were closed to swimmers Monday afternoon after a cluster of large sharks was spotted near the shore, authorities said.

A police helicopter was conducting a routine flyover of the coast about 3:30 p.m. when officials spotted three sharks near Anderson Street, close to the border between Huntington Beach and Seal Beach, according to Lt. Claude Panis with the Huntington Beach Fire Department’s Marine Safety Division.

The sharks were 10 to 12 feet long and about 50 yards from shore, Panis said.

The beaches reopened by Tuesday.

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