The quick-thinking Rockaway Beach lifeguards who raced into action Monday to rescue a swimmer from a vicious shark attack “saved her” by fashioning a tourniquet with a buoy rope to stem the bleeding, their superior said.
In a Tuesday interview with The Post, Chief Lifeguard Jose Diaz recalled the heroics of his colleagues from a day earlier near Beach 59th Street after Tatyana Koltunyuk, 65, suffered a grisly leg injury while enjoying a routine swim.
“The lifeguards really saved her. Really,” Diaz said.
Koltunkyk, who goes to the beach five days a week and is friendly with the lifeguard staff, was only about 10 feet off shore “just treading water, relaxing” when the shark clamped its teeth down on her left leg just above the knee, according to Diaz.
Lifeguards on duty then darted in the ocean when they heard Koltunyuk “crying for help,” said Diaz.
“We saw that she was bitten,” the 68-year-old chief lifeguard added. “The blood was coming out a lot so they gave her a tourniquet with the buoy, which has a rope, and they tied it so she doesn’t bleed to death.”
The lieutenant lifeguard who tied the rope knew Koltunkyk and “always talks to her,” Diaz said.
Another city Parks Department employee who witnessed the attack, Shaneka Thomas, said that despite her awful wound, Koltunyuk “seemed calm” once the lifeguards laid her down.
“They were trying to … talk to her,” said Thomas. “There was a lot of commotion. I still think that she was in shock because I don’t think she even responded to them. She was mumbling. She seemed calm once they laid her down.”
Shaneka Thomas, who has worked at Rockaway Beach with Queens Parks Department for the last 3-4 years, said she was cleaning on the beach when she heard Koltunkyk’s screams from the ocean.
Koltunkyk lost about 20 pounds of flesh in the shark attack — the first one in Rockaway Beach in 70 years.
“She lost a lot of blood,” recalled Diaz. “The artery came right out. You could see the bones and everything. It was crazy,” he said.
Diaz, who’s from New Jersey and has been lifeguarding for 53 years, came out of retirement this summer amid a lifeguard shortage, he said.
In all of his years on the job, he said he had never seen anything like Monday’s shark attack.
“We go swimming like every other day. We go swimming with the lifeguards and we see sharks but they don’t really do anything to us. This is the first time this happened. It’s weird. Everybody’s afraid to go into the water now. I don’t blame them,” he said.
Koltunyuk, a Ukrainian immigrant, was taken to Jamaica Hospital, where staff said she was in stable but critical condition Tuesday.
It’s not certain exactly what kind of shark bit the woman, but teeth marks on the woman’s leg are indicative of potentially a bull or thresher shark, a source familiar with the attack told The Post.
Since the attack, the lifeguards have been told to do nothing but follow the direction of the NYPD and FDNY, Diaz said. The beach remained closed to swimmers on Tuesday.
“They say everything is clear, we let the people back in the water. Nothing is open. The City will be like, ‘let’s open up the beach,’ and then that’s it,” he said.