Dante Carrer/Reuters
- A Boston woman was killed by a shark off the coast of the Bahamas on Monday, police said.
- The woman was a newlywed, a witness said, according to a local report.
- There have been 32 confirmed shark attacks in the Bahamas since 1749, according to experts.
A tourist was killed by a shark as she paddleboarded off the coast of the Bahamas on Monday, officials said.
The 44-year-old woman from Boston was paddling away from the shore of a resort along with a male relative when the shark attacked her, according to a statement from the Royal Bahamas Police Force. It did not name either person.
Police said the pair were about three-quarters of a mile out from the shoreline of the Sandals Royal Bahamian resort in Cable Beach, New Providence, according to local newspaper The Nassau Guardian.
A lifeguard witnessed the incident and sped out in a rescue boat, managing to pull both the man and woman from the water, the police statement said.
The woman had "significant trauma to the right side of her body," it said.
This included damage to her right hip and right upper arm, Sergeant Desiree Ferguson clarified to reporters, The Nassau Guardian reported.
Emergency medics declared her dead on the beach, the police statement said.
Dante Carrer/Reuters
Those nearby were left in shock.
"I watched them push out from the beach," an unnamed jet ski operator told The Nassau Guardian, adding: "They were laughing and talking. They were side by side and laughing and talking."
Spotting the attack, he said he saw the man standing on the board "screaming for help."
The woman, who he said was a newlywed, was already in the water at that time, he told the publication.
A Facebook user at the resort described guests and staff as being deeply upset by the events.
Sandals did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.
The incident comes two weeks after a German woman went missing after encountering a shark during a diving trip off another Bahamian beach, Reuters reported, citing police.
Authorities are still searching for the woman, The Nassau Guardian reported.
Shark attacks are vanishingly rare, but the Bahamas remains one of the world's most likely locations to suffer one, according to the International Shark Attack File.
There have been a total of 32 unprovoked shark attacks documented and confirmed in the Bahamas since 1749, it said.