New Yorker Critical After Losing Leg to Shark in the Bahamas

M I A M I, Aug. 6, 2001 -- A Wall Street banker celebratinghis 10th wedding anniversary with his wife in the Bahamas wasin critical condition after losing his leg in a shark attack, ahospital official said today.

Krishna Thompson, 36, of Long Island, was flown after theattack on Saturday to a hospital in Miami where surgeonsamputated his mangled leg above the knee.

"He is in trauma recovery now," Lorraine Nelson, aspokeswoman for Miami's Jackson Memorial Ryder Trauma Center."We don't get shark bite victims often, but whenever it happenswe get them."

Thompson and his wife Ave Maria Thompson, 34, had arrivedat the Our Lucaya Beach Resort in Freeport on the island ofGrand Bahama on Friday. That night they went out for dinner anddancing and he presented her with a gift of diamond earrings.

On Saturday morning, he went for a swim in the sea whileshe slept.

Heroic Tussle

"He was just swimming off the beach when something, ashark, grabbed his leg and started pulling him down," Mrs. Thompson told The Miami Herald. "He kept punching and punching.He has cuts on his hand because of that."

He freed himself and swam to shore with blood pouring fromhis leg. Before collapsing he scrawled his hotel room number inthe sand so that horrified onlookers could contact his wife.

The incident follows an attack last month in Pensacola,Fla., where a bull shark ripped the arm off 8-year-oldJessie Arbogast.

Surgeons later reattached the arm, which wasretrieved from the shark's maw after the boy's uncle draggedthe beast ashore. The boy remains in hospital.

The species of shark that attacked Thompson was unknown,but doctors said judging by the teeth marks, it was a big one.

Because of the blood loss and other complications, doctorssaid there was a possibility of brain damage, the Heraldreported.