A US tourist died after being attacked by a shark while paddling at a Sandals resort in the Bahamas

• A Boston woman was killed by a shark off the coast of the Bahamas on Monday, police said.

• A witness said the woman was a newlywed, according to a local report.

• According to experts, there have been 32 confirmed shark attacks in the Bahamas since 1749.

A tourist was killed by a shark while paddling off the coast of the Bahamas on Monday, officials said.

According to a statement from the Royal Bahamas Police Force, the 44-year-old woman from Boston was paddling away from the shore of a resort with a male relative when the shark attacked them. Neither person was named.

According to local newspaper The Nassau Guardian, police said the pair were about three-quarters of a mile from the shore at the Sandals Royal Bahamian resort in Cable Beach, New Providence.

A lifeguard witnessed the incident and raced 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.

That included damage to her right hip and upper right arm, Sergeant Desiree Ferguson told reporters, The Nassau Guardian reported.

Paramedics pronounced her dead on the beach, the police statement said.

The people nearby were in shock.

“I saw them leaving the beach,” an unnamed jet ski operator told the Nassau Guardian, adding: “They were laughing and talking. They were side by side, laughing and talking.”

When he noticed the attack, he said he saw the man standing on the board and “screaming for help.”

The woman, who he said was a newlywed, was already in the water at the time, he told the publication.

A Facebook user at the resort described that guests and staff were 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 on another beach in the Bahamas, 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 places in the world where such attacks are most likely to occur, according to the International Shark Attack File.

Since 1749, a total of 32 unprovoked shark attacks have been documented and confirmed in the Bahamas, it said.

Read the original article on Business Insider