Months after he was found lifeless face down in Morro Bay waters, authorities said that a 42-year-old Sacramento bodyboarder was killed within minutes by a great white shark.
Tomas Abraham Butterfield was viciously attacked by the shark and bitten in the head, chest, and shoulder while he enjoyed the Christmas Eve holidays on the central California beach.
The coroner’s office determined that Butterfield died “within minutes” after the attack from “complications of multiple penetrating blunt force traumatic injuries.”
A responding deputy noted in his report that the shark had left a tooth in the deceased man’s body and that the radius of the predator’s bite mark was 16 inches.
Butterfield’s skull was reportedly fractured, his ribs crushed and his vena cava vein severed. DNA samples confirmed that the injuries were inflicted by a great white shark.
