Bahamian Resort Battles Allegations in Shark Attack

When Hong Kong real-estate powerhouse Hutchison Whampoa Ltd. was planning the $400-million resort that opened in December on Grand Bahama Island, senior management knew that it was entering a competitive market filled with potential pitfalls.

But General Manager Eric Waldburger conceded Wednesday that no one foresaw the tale of the Wall Street banker and the shark, nor the major damage-control operation Our Lucaya Beach & Golf Resort had to mount this week after its guest was attacked offshore.

“In 105 years in the Bahamas as a whole,” Waldburger said, “there have only been 39 such incidents, and only three of them in Grand Bahama.”

Long Island resident Krishna Thompson, 36, was in an intensive-care unit Wednesday at a Miami hospital after losing most of his left leg while celebrating his 10th wedding anniversary at the resort.

His wife, Ave Maria Thompson, insists that lifeguards at the Caribbean’s second-largest resort did nothing when a shark attacked him Saturday in 4 feet of water about 18 feet offshore--an accusation that the resort and witnesses deny.

The attack and its aftermath illustrate the risks of doing business in the tourism-dependent Caribbean.

In a region of extraordinary beauty that is plagued by its share of disasters both natural and human-made--from hurricanes to rising drug trafficking and crime--resort owners have had to defend their white-sand beaches and luxury suites during the past year amid reports of tourist slayings, the mystery of a missing travel writer and even a massacre in a Roman Catholic cathedral.

It was against that backdrop that Ave Maria Thompson, a New York City prosecutor, appeared Tuesday before reporters at Miami’s Jackson Memorial Hospital, where her husband remained in serious but stable condition after doctors amputated his leg above the knee.

“He was screaming for help and nobody came. Nobody came,” she said, weeping as she reported her husband’s first words after the ordeal.

“When you scream for help and you’re a lifeguard, you’re supposed to get in there,” she said. “One of the first things he said to me when they removed the ventilator was that he was screaming and they wouldn’t come. He had to swim to them.”

Krishna Thompson’s efforts--beating the shark with his fists, then grabbing his almost-severed leg as he swam toward shore, where his last act before passing out was scrawling the couple’s room number in the sand--drew largely local news coverage in Florida when he was airlifted here Saturday. After all, 16 of the 31 shark attacks recorded worldwide this year by the International Shark Attack File, which is run by the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville, took place off the state’s shores.

But Ave Maria Thompson’s emotional news conference Tuesday drew national attention.

On Wednesday, resort manager Waldburger and a Bahamas-based doctor who was jogging by when Krishna Thompson came ashore found themselves giving a battery of interviews swearing to quite a different version of events.

Lavishing praise on Our Lucaya’s lifeguards, Waldburger said they saved Thompson’s life.

“They did not hesitate to jump in” the moment they spotted Thompson’s head above the surface near the fin of the shark, Waldburger said. The guards swam out to Thompson, formed a human chain and brought him hand to hand to shore, where they used a lifeguard’s belt to apply a tourniquet to the leg and wrapped the wound in towels, he said.

“The fact that they jumped in there in total disregard of their own lives is remarkable,” Waldburger said. “They saved a man’s life.”

Dr. Nicholas Namias, the surgeon who amputated Thompson’s leg in Miami, said it was a miracle that he didn’t die from blood loss after the shark tore most of the flesh, nerves and muscle from his calf.

Rolando Corral, the Grand Bahama surgeon who was jogging by at the time of the attack, said during TV interviews Wednesday that the lifeguards’ performance was exemplary.

The resort’s manager and its publicists declined comment Wednesday on what may have motivated Ave Maria Thompson’s account; she confirmed that she was in her room at the time of the attack and attributed all details to her wounded husband.

“We have done what we are supposed to do,” said Waldburger, when asked whether the resort or its owners have offered any compensation to the Thompsons. “We have fulfilled our obligation.”

Ave Maria Thompson did use her news conference to profusely thank the resort staff and managers who accompanied her and prayed for her husband at hospitals in the Bahamas and Miami.

She told reporters that before doctors removed her husband’s ventilator she asked him if there was anything he wanted or needed. He wrote her a note that said, simply, “a leg.”