American woman killed in shark attack in the Bahamas

A woman from Massachusetts died Monday after being attacked by a shark while paddleboarding in the Bahamas, according to police and WFXT.

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In a police report obtained by WFXT, officials said the Boston woman and a male relative had travelled to the Sandals Royal Bahamian resort in Nassau for a vacation.

Around 11:15 a.m. Monday, the 44-year-old woman and her relative were paddleboarding away from the shoreline at the back of a resort in western New Providence when she was bitten, the Royal Bahamas Police Force said.

A resort lifeguard got into a boat and rescued the woman and her relative. The lifeguard tried to perform CPR, but police said the woman was pronounced dead at the scene with “significant trauma to the right side of her body.”

Police did not immediately identify the woman.

Greg Skomal, a shark biologist with the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, is looking into what caused the attack, according to WFXT. It marked the third deadly encounter between sharks and people in the Bahamas since September 2022, the news station reported.

“We would try to get as much information as possible that would try to give us a sense of why this happened,” Skomal told WFXT. He added that both bull and tiger sharks have been implicated in the attacks.

Authorities continue to investigate.