AUSTRALIA – Eric Birighitti, a U.S. college soccer player, died on Jan. 2 after drowning near Twilight Beach off the coast of Western Australia.
Birighitti, 21, was vacationing with friends when he slipped on some rocks and fell into the ocean before getting pulled out to sea by the current.
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His body was discovered Tuesday by a family on a boating outing who said sharks were attacking and eating Birighitti’s body, according to Yahoo Sports.
A woman, whose sister and father were on the boat that made the gruesome discovery, told 9 News Perth her family described one of the sharks as “quite a big one.”
ESPERANCE SHARK THREATThere’s more evidence of the shark threat off Esperance tonight with sightings just metres away from a busy beach. They were attracted to the area by a body, two days after a scuba diver was attacked and killed. #9News
Posted by 9 News Perth on Tuesday, January 7, 2020
Birighitti was from Melbourne and won a National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics championship title with Nebraska’s Hastings College soccer team in 2016.
He was attending St. Thomas Aquinas College in New York at the time of his death, according to Heavy.com.