LOMPOC, Calif., Oct. 24 (UPI) -- Three Southern California beaches remained closed Sunday after a shark killed a body surfer on Friday, officials said.
Officials at Vandenberg Air Force Base told the Los Angeles Times that Wall, Minuteman and Surf beaches in Santa Barbara County would be closed at least until Monday, maybe longer.
Wildlife officials were trying to identify the type of shark in the attack.
Andrew Nosal, a shark expert at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in La Jolla, told the Times that, based on its behavior and the victim's injury, the shark most likely was a great white.
"It takes a shark of massive size and jaw to inflict that kind of injury," he said.
The shark bit Lucas Ransom, 19, Friday morning at Surf Beach, and severed his left leg at the pelvis, his parents said.
Witnesses said Ransom, a chemical engineering student at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a friend were about 100 yards offshore at the time. Fire personnel from Vandenberg pronounced him dead at the scene.
Surf Beach is on Vandenberg's 42 miles of coastline, but the public has access to it from California Highway 246.
