Fatal shark attack off San Diego coast

11:50 AM, April 25, 2008

Updated at 11:49

A 66-year-old man swimming in the ocean off Solana Beach was killed this morning by a shark. The attack took place about 150 yards offshore as the man was swimming with a group training for an event, reports Molly Hennessy-Fiske.

"They were swimming and the victim apparently yelled ‘Shark,’ or words to that effect, and the witnesses that were in the water apparently saw him actually being lifted out of the water and drug under,” said San Diego County sheriff's spokesman Phil Brust. “They went to his aid and dragged him onto the beach, where he succumbed to his injuries.”

It's not clear what kind of shark killed the man. Officials have closed off beaches in Solana Beach and Encinitas as a precaution, according to the San Diego Union Tribune. The Associated Press is reporting that the last fatal shark attack in California took place in 2004, when a great white killed a skin diver off the Mendocino County coast.

-- Jesus Sanchez

Posted by Steve Padilla on April 25, 2008 in Animal Attacks | Permalink

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Comments

Surfed about two miles up the coast from it when it happened... Unheard of!

Posted by: triumf clothing | April 25, 2008 at 12:39 PM

I knew Dave. I met Dave In Ketchikan, Alaska last year. He came up fishing with his good friends from Southern California. As a matter of fact, we just spent some time with him at the Fred Hall Show in Del Mar last month.
The world lost an incredible human being, he will be greatly missed. My thoughts and prayers go out to his family and friends............Capt. Travis Wilcox

Posted by: Travis Wilcox | April 29, 2008 at 06:43 PM

Dave Martin was an avid fisherman and all-around great man. He was planning a fishing trip with Big Fish Charters in Ketchikan, Alaska this summer. He will be greatly missed. I am going to go out on a limb and say that his friends will have the best fishing trip of their lives. Why you ask? They have a new eye in the sky and from my past experiences, as weird as it may sound, we always seem to have very good fishing after a loved one has fallen.
We are all still very saddened by Dave's tragic accident and I hope everybody who reads this realizes that life could end at any time. DO NOT take anything for granted and live each day to its fullest.

Posted by: Travis Wilcox | May 06, 2008 at 09:33 AM

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Tony Barboza, a Colorado native who moved to Southern California as a college student, is a reporter for The Times' Orange County edition, where he covers the beaches and the city of Irvine. A lifelong animal lover, he lives with his 2-year-old cats Mario and Vincent.

Carla Hall, a general assignment reporter, has covered animals and their people across the state of California (and occasionally beyond). She chronicled the Oakland Zoo's attempts to hand-raise a baby African elephant and followed the Los Angeles Zoo's L.A.-born gorilla Caesar on his trek to a new home at Zoo Atlanta several years ago. Preferring to get up close and personal with her subjects, she once fed corn cobs to the L.A. Zoo's now-deceased elephant Gita (no connection between her demise and the feeding) and spent hours interviewing pit bulls at the Laurel Canyon Dog Park. Currently animal-less, Carla still insists on plying people with anecdotes about her cat Arnold, who died 10 years ago.

Francisco Vara-Orta has been a staff writer at The Times since 2006, writing about birth control for squirrels in Santa Monica and pigeons in Hollywood, the hidden culture of TV pet adoptions and puppy theft. Although he grew up with pet dogs, he realized the sad realities of neglected animals after spending a summer in high school volunteering at a local shelter. Francisco, an L.A. transplant, graduated from St. Mary's University in his hometown of San Antonio, where his dog Diego now keeps his mother company.

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