Marisa Medici said she begged her nephew to stay clear of Cape Cod’s shark-infested waters, but the ill-fated boogie boarder laughed off her fears.
Arthur Medici, 26, became the state’s first shark attack fatality in 82 years on Saturday at Newcomb Hollow Beach in Wellfleet.
“Oh my gosh, that’s where he wanted to be every day. Every day. Always I asked him, ‘Don’t go. Please, don’t go.’ He’d say, ‘Aunt, they’re not going to bite me. The sharks don’t bite me. I’m Superman!’ He was always making jokes about himself. And when it happened, I couldn’t believe it was him, that it happened to us. There’s no words. No words,” the grief-stricken aunt told the Herald yesterday as she clutched the dark-colored suit she said Arthur Medici will wear when he is buried in his native Brazil.
The Bunker Hill Community College student was engaged to be married to a medical student from Everett.
“I didn’t know that he would die doing something that he loved. But he did,” an inconsolable Medici said outside her nautical-themed home in Revere.
Marisa Medici, 55, said the shark attacked her nephew’s legs from behind about 30 feet off the beach, severing his femoral arteries. He bled to death, she said.
“He left on Friday night with his brother-in-law — his future brother-in-law,” Medici said. “He stayed in a hotel and when he woke up in the morning he headed for the beach. He took nice pictures from the beach, actually.”
Between sobs, Medici said her nephew and Isaac Rocha “went in the water. Isaac was a few meters away from him and saw when he was being pulled down. He saw something was wrong. And when (Arthur) came up out of the water, he went to him to rescue him and take him to the sand. But because the shark bit on the back of his legs, the calves, he lost a lot of blood. A lot of blood. Basically everything.
“When he was on the sand, he’d already lost the blood. They did CPR, they did everything. They didn’t save him,” she said through tears.
The state medical examiner’s office is expected to perform an autopsy on Arthur Medici today. A GoFundMe page established by the family yesterday to raise money to bring his body home to Brazil raised more than $17,000 in eight hours.
Medici said her nephew had been in America four years. He was working as a cook at a pizzeria in Boston while studying engineering at Bunker Hill in Charlestown. Kristin Colville, a spokeswoman for Capital Grille, said he’d previously worked at the chain’s Burlington restaurant.
Medici said her nephew and his fiancee would have been together two years this December. And though a wedding date was not set, Medici said Arthur “bought the ring. The wedding shower, everything, was ready. She’s heartbroken.”
“He was very handsome outside, inside, joyful. The house was always full of his laughter,” the aunt said. “He never complained. Never complained. He was amazing.”
