Share

Dolphin leaps onto boat, breaks California woman’s ankles | New York’s PIX11

A California woman was injured by a dolphin while on a boat trip with her loved ones.

Advertisement

A Dolphin jumped into a boat where a couple was celebrating their 18th marriage anniversary and in the process broke both the ankles of the lady as it thrashed around. “It came right onto my wife and flopped in the boat and knocked down and grazed my daughter”, her husband, Dirk Frickman, says. As he steered the boat, his daughter yelled out repeatedly “don’t let it die”. They kept it hydrated by putting water on it. Officials from the Sheriff’s Department Harbor Patrol were able to identify the boat and provided them assistance. A waiting ambulance rushed them to a hospital.

Jeff Hallock of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department called what happened “a freak incident”. The department’s Harbor Patrol had never had to respond to anything like that before, he said.

It was a tougher task to free the dolphin wedged between the chairs. Though, this moment will definitely be one to remember for the Frickman family.

Frickman continued to pour buckets of water on the animal he petted it, and he stated that it made “squeaking” noises “like in the movies”. The 350-pound whale first banged the railing and then entered in the boat.

Then, he and two dock hands extracted the dolphin, using a rope.

Chrissie was brought to the emergency room where she spent five hours being treated for her two broken ankles, one with a clean break that may no longer require a plate or pins to heal and the other with torn ligaments around the break. She said that she was “scared for the dolphin” when it leaped into the boat, and she was “scared for my kids”. It was safely released back into the waters right after the incident. She stated in an interview that the animal was probably “just as traumatized as we were”.

One dolphin accidently jumped into the boat, and started slamming into the family members.

Advertisement

They had thought themselves safe inside their 21-foot cruising boat so they though there would be no harm in getting up close and personal with a nice group of dolphins they spotted in the distance.

Dolphin Jumps on Boat, Crashing Wedding Anniversary