Family Beach Vacation Takes Horrifying Turn When 9-Year-Old Son Is Attacked by Shark

By Amanda Thomason March 24, 2021 at 3:19pm

Many people are overdue for a vacation. They’ve been cooped up indoors or in their immediate neighborhoods, and as the weather warms up, more and more people will start taking trips and resuming a more normal routine.

The Weiskopf family from Minnesota was very much looking forward to their time in Virginia Key, Florida. Before they even went to the hotel, they went down to the main attraction — the water.

Just moments into what should have been a relaxing family getaway, disaster struck in the form of what mom Kristine said was a four-foot-long gray shark.

“I was holding his hand the whole time and he was kind of body surfing a little bit and so when I pulled him up — he had fallen on his stomach — and when I pulled him up I noticed that there was just a big chunk of skin missing from his shoulder,” Kristine told WPLG-TV on Sunday.

“And he just said, ‘Ow,’ and then I looked down and there was about a 4-foot gray shark just kinda swimming away, so I just scooped him up and ran him up the beach.”

“At the time … I was in mom mode … it didn’t even register, the severity,” she told WPLG on Wednesday. “All I was focused on was getting him help.”

Jay, Kristine’s 9-year-old son, was missing a chunk of flesh out of his shoulder, and photos show tooth marks up and down his arm. He was rushed to Jackson Memorial Hospital for surgery, and needed 120 stitches to close the wound, according to Inside Edition.

“I just love him so much,” dad Ren said. “He’s such a great, great kid and we’re still in shock … We just thank God that — that he didn’t take his life. That … he’s gonna be OK.”

Jay is doing well and was released on Tuesday, and the family has been trying to enjoy what is left of their trip while being mindful of their son’s health and well-being.

“He just, right now, wants to go home, and that’s really sad because we had so much fun planned,” Kristine said.

“A shark was trying to eat me at the ocean and the beach,” the boy said, matter-of-factly, in an interview with WPLG-TV on Tuesday.

Understandably, the family has decided the rest of their vacation would involve “no beach and no ocean,” as Jay — who also has autism — said. But the Miami Seaquarium has found a good middle ground.

Jay got to visit and make memories with the friendly dolphins at the aquarium, hopefully putting a positive spin on the vacation.

“We’re just so happy that Jay is able to experience a positive interaction with sea life,” Kristine said, adding “we don’t want him to be afraid.”

All involved are grateful that the injury has been responding well to treatment and that the attack wasn’t worse.

“We’re from Minnesota,” Kristine told KARE-TV. “[W]e don’t have oceans. I — I never thought in two feet of water that something of this magnitude could happen because it wasn’t just a scratch.

“It was horrific. We’re lucky that we didn’t lose him.”

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