Sam Kellett, 28, was with mates spear fishing at the Yorke Peninsula coastline in south Australia in February last year when he was killed, The Mirror reports.
Witnesses told the inquest they saw a huge five-metre great white shark jump out of the water, before thrashing about wildly. His friends said they didn’t see the attack itself, but that there was a huge pool of red blood where Mr Kellett had been.
I turned around [and] saw the tail of a shark come out of the water and it was thrashing around.
I put my face under the water to see the shark but I could not see it.
All of a sudden a white pointer shark came out the murky water vertically towards the surface just behind me and almost launched itself out of the water.
Another witness Nicholas Carson claimed he was about 25m from Mr Kellett when he saw a thrashing shark tail in a pool of blood red water: “I was directly behind the shark so I saw the whole body jump out of the water and I think the shark was about 5m long and it was a dark grey colour… It looked like a great white shark. It happened so fast.”
Police divers couldn’t locate Mr Kellett’s body, but found his spear gun which had “discernible serrated incisions” consistent with white shark teeth impressions.
The inquest continues.
