A man was reportedly killed from a shark attack off the Hawaii coastline on Saturday, and witnesses say the man was badly mangled.
The 65-year-old man from California, who has yet to be identified, was swimming in the salty waters about 60 yards away from the sandy beach of Maui near the Kaanapali Shores resort, according to Hawaii News Now.
The Maui Fire Department said the man was brought to shore, where CPR began.
Allison Keller, who said the attacked man was vacationing with his wife, said she witnessed the man coming to land described his body that was tattered, torn and bitten.
"They pulled the man up. He looked unconscious when they transferred him to the gurney. And we could see that they were trying to do CPR on him," Keller said. "As we got closer, I saw some blood on his stomach and then I got looking a little bit more and his wrist, it looked like the skin on his wrist was just torn off."
Paramedics were unable to revive the man on the scene, and Keller described even more trauma the man apparently endured in the water.
"I got looking closer and his entire left leg from his knee down was just missing," Keller said. "There was no blood or anything."
Officials in Maui said the man had been swimming in water that is approximately 20-25 feet deep in that area, and that winds were light and waters were clear.
Attacks by tiger sharks have been quite prevalent in the last few years, and officials say there have been six shark attacks in this year alone. And though local officials didn't say what kind of shark attacked this man, one shark expert said it has all the signs of a tiger shark.
"Maui has for some reason been a hot spot in the Hawaiian Islands for tiger shark attacks, and I don't think anybody can really say with any certainty why that is," Michael Domier told KHON2. "There's certainly great tiger shark habitat on Maui, a lot of shallow water, but a lot of people in the water, too."
The most recent shark attack fatality was a little more than four years ago off the coast of Ahihi Bay, Kanahena Point in Maui when the victim was snorkeling on April 29, 2015.
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