A young father from Queensland has recounted the terrifying moment he was ferociously mauled by a shark.
Glenn Dickson, 25, lost his leg in the attack at a reef off Hinchinbrook Island in North Queensland but he was lucky to escape with his life.
“I felt a massive pull and shake, and I knew I was being attacked,” Glenn tells 60 Minutes’ Peter Stefanovic.
“It was kind of slow motion as I watched blood rise … the image is imprinted in my head … I remember watching the shark through my blood.”
Glenn had become separated from the rest of the spearfishing group when the 3-and-a-half metre shark savagely tore through his leg.
“I got as close as you can get to death. I never gave up, I could have gone to sleep but I thought ‘screw that’ and just focused on my breathing and on the pain.”
Dickson and his fiancée, Jessie Lee.
His spearfishing mates estimated he “died” six times after they’d got to him and they were on the way to the hospital.
“He had a 360 degree cut around his thigh, and every artery severed,” Dickson’s friend Rick Bettua revealed.
Rick, an ex-navy officer immediately applied a tourniquet to stop the excessive bleeding – he reckons “It came down to seconds.”
“He had a 360 degree cut, every artery and every vein had been severed and he was an ashy-white colour.”
Glenn’s mates saved his life.
Dickson says he’d been refused much-needed benefits since the attack.
“They [Centrelink] didn’t consider losing a leg as a disability. They must think I’m going to grow it back,” he said.
With two young children to support and another on the way, Dickson is in desperate need of a disability support pension from Centrelink.
A prosthetic leg will set him back around $70,000. A GoFundMe page has been set up for Dickson and his family.
“The bills still come flowing in – rent/car payments/insurances/food & fuel etc as well as the addition of Glenn and Jessie Lee’s third bundle of joy in June.. to be able to take this burden off of this wonderful family would help in some ways, ease the pain of watching the man they love tackle the biggest emotional and physical hurdle of his life,” the fundraising page reads.
It’s amassed almost $51k so far.
Glenn is determined to walk again to stand along his bride-to-be, Jessie Lee’s side on their wedding day.
