When a pummeling wave struck

Here's the happening:

A young surfer used her surfboard leg rope as a tourniquet to stop the blood flowing from a gaping fin wound after in a freak accident.
She was bleeding on a deserted Waikato beach at night with no cellphone reception to call for help.
Leah Cameron, a 22-year-old intensive care nurse, was out for a twilight surf off the rugged west coast beach of Ruapuke this week in what started as calm, 3ft conditions, when a pummeling wave struck.
It toppled the surfer, embedding her beloved 5'10" Fish board into the sand and sending the fibreglass fin deep into the surfer's inner left thigh.
"Conditions were perfect, quite small and it was like a freak wave that shut down on me. I ended up in the wrong place, wrong time. It was quite surreal.

The story was published in stuff.co.nz/waikato-times/news/ a few days ago. What I was particularly interested in this report is the new term used -- a pummeling wave struck! I am intrigued! A new way to describe a freaque wave, hmmm, was a pummeling action can be considered as something freaque? Well, why not?