The former New York City fashion executive killed by a shark off the coast of Maine “just started screaming” when the beast attacked her, according to a neighbor who witnessed the creepy death.
Before the great white man looked at Julie Dimperio Holowach, 63, he was “laughing and giggling” with his daughter as they swam together about 20 meters from Bailey Island around 3:30 p.m. Monday, Tom Whyte he told the Portland Press Herald.
But seconds later, Holowach, the former president of handbag company Kipling North America, “just started screaming for help,” said Whyte, who used binoculars to see the scene unfold from his second-floor office in a building with view to Mackerel Cove. .
Whyte told the newspaper that Holowach “sank” when her daughter swam toward her.
“It seemed like she was dragged down,” he said.
Another witness, Steve Arnold, told the Press Herald that he saw Holowach being thrown out of the water.
“I saw her get up out of the water a little … 12 to 18 inches maybe,” he said.
After Holowach was attacked, her daughter swam back to shore, where she collapsed on her hands and knees in the sand and screamed for help.
Two kayakers, identified by the Press Herald as Charlie Wemyss-Dunn and his mother, rushed to assist Holowach in the water and brought her back to shore.
“We saw what was in the water. We saw her condition, ”Wemyss-Dunn told the newspaper.
Once Holowach was brought ashore, paramedics immediately pronounced her dead.
Holowach, who was wearing a wetsuit at the time, was likely mistaken for a seal, Maine officials said at a news conference Tuesday.
His death marked the first deadly shark attack in Maine.
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