Great white shark killed California bodyboarder on Christmas Eve, report confirms

Tomas Abraham Butterfield, 42, was bitten in the head, chest and shoulder in the coroner’s report said

A Christmas Eve shark attack in central California this past December killed a 42-year-old bodyboarder, the Associated Press reported.

Tomas Abraham Butterfield was bodyboarding at Morro Bay on 24 December when he was attacked by what officials describe was a great white shark.

The coroner’s report found that the Sacramento man, who was visiting his mother and brother in the area, was bitten in the head, chest and shoulder and ultimately died from “complications of multiple penetrating blunt force traumatic injuries,” The Tribune of San Luis Obispo County reported on Tuesday.

The Tribune went on to note that a piece of the shark’s tooth was later recovered from the man’s body, citing a report from a sheriff's detective, which was among a trove of documents released to the paper under a public records request.

Mr Butterfield was pulled from the waves when a surfer on the California beach noticed the man lying face down in the wake, his bodyboard still attached. He died at the scene.

Though no details have been released about the size of the shark that fatally wounded the man, representative from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, who assisted in the investigation, noted in the coroner’s report that the species was confirmed to be a great white shark through DNA samples.

Bite marks on the man’s body were as large as 16in, according to the detective's report, cited by the AP.

At the time of the attack, the LA Times reported that, though the local population of great white sharks off the coast of California had boomed in recent years, thanks to a consistent lion and elephant seal population, encounters between the sharks and humans remained rare.

Christopher Lowe, a professor of marine biology and director of the Shark Lab at California State Long Beach, told the newspaper that “you have a better chance of winning the lottery” than being attacked by a shark.

Mr Butterfield’s death from a great white shark makes him the first to succumb to the species in 18 years in the area.

His attack also marked the only fatal shark attack documented in the US in 2021. Since the 1950s, the California Fish and Wildlife have recorded 199 shark encounters in the state, with only 14 fatalities.