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Globe Correspondents and Globe Staff
Photo via Facebook
Arthur Medici.
REVERE – Paddling on his boogie board, positioning himself to catch the next good wave on a Wellfleet beach on Saturday afternoon, Arthur Medici went underwater.
Five or ten meters away, Isaac Rocha heard a scream as his friend resurfaced. He saw a fin and blood in the water. He swam, grabbed Medici and started dragging him about 40 meters to the coast.
"It's something that never passes your brain, your mind – you never think about it," said Rocha, 16, of Everett, in a phone interview Sunday night. "It was horrible, the worst feeling in the world," he said.
Rocha tried to save him, tying a boogie board strap like a makeshift tourniquet around Medici's leg. But the 26-year-old Revere teenager was attacked by a shark and was pronounced dead at the Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis later Saturday.
Medici was planning to marry Rocha's sister. The teenager said that he remembered Medici as a person full of love who looked like him.
"It mattered a lot to everyone," Rocha said. "Everyone with whom he came into contact was loved [by]e Love you.
He said Medici "always fought for things he loved and loved."
Medici had made custom rings in his native Brazil and planned to offer Emily Rocha on a beach soon, according to Rocha.
Rocha said Medici was an engineering student, who had recently completed summer school, and a surf enthusiast, who often took him to Cape Town and Rhode Island. The two had been surfing together at Newcomb Hollow until dusk the night before and five days earlier.
"There is no way to describe
how much it hurts, "he said.
On Sunday, the strong scent of the ocean at Revere Beach filled the air around the pale blue house in a quiet street where Medici lived with his aunt and uncle.
Medici had moved in with them on Beachland Avenue about four years ago, said Marisa Medici, her aunt, in a brief phone interview. Medici's parents live in Brazil, she said.
Itamar Medici, the father of the victim, wrote painfully his loss on Facebook on Sunday.
"Son … you left me. I am broken and I left without the will to live, "he said in Portuguese.
"I was fighting to give you everything and now … who will give you what I saved. I no longer have the will to live because nothing makes sense … I love you for all eternity, "he wrote.
A GoFundMe page for the Medici family had raised more than $ 16,000 Sunday afternoon.
Medici was active in his church and loved hiking, biking, surfing and other sports, according to a statement posted on the fundraising site.
"Our lives will never be the same without him. His laugh has filled our home and he will be sorely missed, "the statement said.
Medici was a student at Bunker Hill Community College, where he enrolls part-time in the spring, according to a college statement.
"The faculty, staff and administration of Bunker Hill Community College offer their deepest condolences after the tragic death of Arthur Medici, who was killed in a shark attack on Cape Cod on Saturday afternoon," the statement said.
Photo courtesy of Rosi Gava
Arthur Medici.
According to college spokeswoman Brooke L. Yarborough, the college offers support to teachers and students who may have been in class with Medici.
Richard Collins, director of Fitzgerald & Collins in Marlborough, visited Beachland Avenue's home on Sunday afternoon to discuss funeral services. He said leaving the plans were not finalized.
Medici's death was the first of a shark attack for over 80 years and only the fourth in Massachusetts history. It was not clear what kind of shark had bitten Medici.
Saturday's attack came after a New York man was injured by a shark while swimming near Truro last month. A previous shark attack near Truro in 2012 injured another man while practicing bodysurfing.
Last month, Orleans press master Nathan Sears wrote on Facebook that "the coastal waters off Cape Cod are truly a wild place."
"Regardless of the amount of signage and information we provide, there always seems to be a level of complacency," wrote Sears. "People continue to risk getting in and swimming in the water even after the recent incident in Truro where the man was bitten."
Hundreds of seals have attracted sharks off Cape Town, and local residents have seen shark sightings increase in recent decades, according to authorities.
"We can not control two things: the behavior of sharks and the behavior of seals … what does that leave us? We need to change our behavior, "said Greg Skomal, Program Director and Senior Scientist of the State's Marine Fisheries Division.
Colin Sheehan sat with his 12 year old son, Dermott, on the edge of a sand dune on Newcomb Hollow Beach on Sunday afternoon watching the ocean where Medici had been attacked.
Sheehan, 51, said he had met Medici on the same beach a few days before the attack while they were retiring from their suits.
Medici was with a friend, he said, and seemed to have had a good time.
When he saw Medici's face in the paper on Sunday, Sheehan said he had begun to shake and cry.
"It's surreal, everyone is in shock," Sheehan said. "[My son] and I would be in the water right now but it's too scary. He went from hypothetical to reality.
He did not go to the water on Sunday, he said, despite the perfect day, but many other surfers did it, regardless of a sign indicating "No swimming, surfing, etc. until new order ".
Under the sign, there was a memorial that had been set up with candles, seashells and flowers.
Earlier in the day, beachgoers said surfers had an observer standing on the dunes with binoculars in search of sharks.
Debee Tlumacki
People stopped by a makeshift memorial on Newcomb Hollow Beach in Wellfleet for the shark attack victim Arthur Medici, who was killed by a Shark on Saturday while he was doing bodyboarding.
Miranda Kielpinski, 28, of Harwich, took advantage of the swell Sunday. What had happened was terrible, she says, but the ocean is a playground for these animals.
"When you surf, it's a passion," Kielpinski said. "We are well aware of what could happen."
Paul Fleming, 69, of Eastham, said he was at Newcomb Hollow at the time of the attack.
The retiree and the longtime surfer had seen Medici come out of the water on Saturday.
On Sunday, he was back on the beach and getting ready for a few hours of surfing.
Surfing is something they live for, he said.
"It's always traumatic for me today and it's my solution," Fleming said. "I have to do it, we must all go out here. We can not not go out here. We need to. I'm nervous in hell, but I owe it to the young man who died yesterday.
When she was sitting on the shore on Sunday, Pennsylvania resident Susan Ketchum, 55, said she could not help but think of the young man who had died the day before.
"I paid him a silent tribute to my chair," she said. "I think a lot about that. I did not know him but I love this place and I love the ocean.
The correspondent of the globe, Debora Almeida, contributed to this story. Lucas Phillips can be contacted at [email protected]. John Hilliard can be reached at [email protected]. Cristela Guerra can be reached at [email protected].
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