Maui Shark Attack Kills California Doctor

MAUI, HI — A 65-year-old California man was attacked and killed by a shark Saturday morning while swimming along the Maui shoreline with his wife.

According to witnesses and Maui Fire Department officials, the man was swimming in water about 20 feet deep when he was suddenly pulled under. The shark attack happened at about 9 a.m. near Ka’anapali Beach Park. By the time authorities pulled him ashore, he was unconscious and had lost part of his leg.

Allison Keller witnessed the traumatic scene.

“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,” Keller told Hawaii News Now. “And then I got looking closer and his entire left leg from his knee down was just missing. There was no blood or anything.”

According to a Maui Police Department spokesman, the victim was Thomas Smiley, a tourist from Granite Bay, California. The New York Post reported that Smiley was a recently retired optometrist, a father of three and grandfather to six. He was known for his adventurous spirit and his charitable work, organized racing events to raise money for children.

His death was the first fatal shark attack in Hawaii since 2015 when a snorkler was killed off Maui. It was Hawaii’s six shark attack this year and only the fifth fatal attack since 1995, Fox News reported.

Authorities searched the area for the shark in the aftermath of the attack, but they were unable to find it. Experts suspect a tiger shark, a common culprit in Hawaii shark attacks, is to blame.

“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,” shark expert 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.”

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