SPI shark attacks bring back dark memories for family of 1962 victim

SOUTH PADRE ISLAND – The Shark attacks on South Padre Island have surprised, angered and frightened many people.

The four shark attacks occurred on Thursday and caused great confusion and dismay.

And for Regina Bell and her sister Raena Jennings, the attacks brought back dark memories of the attack on the island in which their father Hans Fix died in 1962.

“I’m terrified of the Gulf,” said Bell, now 76. “I don’t swim in the Gulf. Ankle-deep at most, if at all.”

Bell was 14 years old that Sunday morning when her father, a machinist, was attacked by a shark. Her sister Raena was 3 years old and has been speaking about the incident since the attacks on the island on Thursday.

Thursday’s attacks likely brought out dark emotions in her, and in such moments it is natural to talk about the memories. She began posting online about the attacks and recalling her memories of the attack on her father. Many of her friends, some of whom she has known for many years, expressed surprise because they knew nothing about her father’s story.

Bell recalled the day’s events very clearly from memory. She and her twin brother and sister were out on inflatable boats while their father was fishing in waist-deep water. Some media reports and sources have claimed he worked in a cotton gin – which he was not – and that he had a fishing line tied around his waist. This is also false.

“A lot of things happened that the media didn’t know about,” she said. “I should publish a book about it.”

According to your recollection, the following actually happened.

Her father, Hans Fix, 46 years old, had walked out to the second sandbank, which was possible because it was low tide. So there on the second sandbank he fished in waist-deep water. When the tide came back, he moved closer to the shore.

“It wasn’t that far out,” Bell recalled. “It was probably a little further out than where we saw the shark on the beach.”

This “shark on the beach” is the one her daughter and granddaughter filmed on the island on Thursday.

Yes, 60 years later, Hans Fix’s family was on the same beach, watching – and this time filming – another shark attack. One of the victims had lost most of the fibula on one of her legs. Bell says the video shows the shark a dangerous 30 feet from shore.

Bell said sharks regularly come between the sandbars to feed.

“If you don’t see them, you don’t know they’re there,” Bell said.

Tony Reisinger, Cameron County Marine Extension Agent, has indicated in numerous social media posts that the shark is most likely a bull shark.

“Sharks, especially bull sharks, are swimming in shallow water close to shore. There are also a lot of mullet in the surf now,” he said via social media.

Other comments suggested that the sharks were being forced in by approaching storms.

Yet no one can remember so many shark attacks in one day, regardless of whether there was a storm or not.

Bell recalled some news reports claiming that the shark that attacked her father, Hans Fix, had ripped off both of his legs. This is also false.

The shark severely mutilated one leg. An ambulance was able to pick him up and take him to a doctor’s office. The ambulance got stuck in the sand at one point and a small crowd managed to free the vehicle. It then ran out of gas about a block from the doctor’s office and he had to be taken there on a stretcher.

From there he was taken by another ambulance to Mercy Hospital in Brownsville, where he died of blood loss.

“I’ve been trying to tell people for many years, ‘Be careful, there are sharks out there.’ And they say, ‘No, no, no.'”

“My father was killed by a shark,” she tells them, and they dismiss it as an exaggerated story made up by someone.

Thursday’s shark attacks are no exaggeration. Photos and videos of a shark and the victims prove this.