Fatal shark attack in California

A shark killed a man near Santa Barbara, California on Tuesday, officials said, nearly two years to the day after another rare but deadly attack off the same beach. The victim, reported as being between 25 and 33 years old, died after the incident at the Surf Beach near the Vandenberg Air Force Base, according to the Los Angeles Times newspaper. "It's a confirmed fatal attack," a spokeswoman for the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office told AFP, giving no further details. "That's all that we have right now." Authorities at the military base responded after a distress call, and rescuers attempted in vain to resuscitate the victim. The victim was not linked to the base, the LA Times said. On October 22, 2010, a 19-year-old surfer was killed a short distance off the same beach, when a shark pulled him under and inflicted a "massive wound," police said at the time. That shark was described as up to 20 feet (6.1 metres) long. The victim was identified as Lucas McKaine Ransom. Santa Barbara is some 130 miles (215 kilometres) northwest along the Pacific coast from Los Angeles. Before the 2010 attack, the last death of this kind involved a great white shark in California in 2008, when a 66-year-old man was attacked as he swam with friends off a beach in San Diego.