A beloved Italian surfer was killed by a swordfish that impaled her chest in a freak accident in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Indonesia.
Giulia Manfrini, 36, was surfing near Masokut Island in the province of West Sumatra when the fish surfaced and made contact with the surfer. She suffered a 2-inch puncture wound and apparently drowned, Indonesia’s Antara News website reported Friday.
“Unexpectedly, a swordfish jumped towards Manfrini and stuck her right in the chest,” Lahmudin Siregar, acting head of the Mentawai Islands Regency Regional Disaster Management Agency, told the site.
Two friends, Alexandre Ribas and Massimo Ferro, were nearby and administered first aid before taking her to the nearby Pei Pei Pasakiat Taileleu Health Center, where she was pronounced dead.
Manfrini was a surfing coach and a co-founder of the London-based Awave Travel agency, which specializes in arranging surfing trips around the world.
Co-founder James Colston said she’d “touched countless people within the surf world,” according to the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
“Her kindness, care and positivity were remembered by all that met her and she will be dearly missed,” Colston said.
Frankie Smithurst of the Mentawi Blue surfing charter company in Padang, the coastal capital of West Sumatra, also said Manfrini would be remembered for her “overflowing excitement for life,” according to the ABC.
In Manfrini’s hometown of Venaria Reale, Italy, outside Turin, Mayor Fabio Giulivi said that “her death has left us shocked and makes us feel helpless in the face of the tragedy that took her from life so prematurely.”
“To her mother Chiara, her father Giorgio and all the people who loved her, a heartfelt embrace from me and from the whole city,” he wrote on Facebook.
