FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Speaking to Local 10 News on Wednesday, just a day after a jet ski crash claimed the life of his 13-year-old daughter and seriously injured another, Rabbi Shlomo Nisanov described the unimaginable pain of preparing to bury his child — a vacation turned nightmare on the waters of Fort Lauderdale.
“I didn’t come to Florida to bury my daughter,” Nisanov said through tears. “I came to Florida to have a good time with her and now I have to take her back in a casket. It’s not the way I imagined my vacation.”
Rochel Nisanov, 13, died Tuesday after the personal watercraft she was riding with her older sister collided with a concrete dock just after 3:30 p.m.
According to investigators, the girls had jumped the wake of a passing boat before losing control and slamming into the structure. Their parents were following behind on another watercraft and rushed to help.
“I have scrapes all over my hand,” Shlomo Nisanov said. “It’s because I had to be the one to pull out my daughters out of the water.”
His 16-year-old daughter, Aviva, recently underwent surgery and remains hospitalized.
Shlomo Nisanov said he was never asked to sign any safety paperwork and questioned what precautions were taken before his daughters were allowed to operate the jet ski.
“We didn’t sign no paperwork. Supposedly, my older daughter took some course. I didn’t see no paperwork. I don’t know what happened,” he said while showing Local 10 his scraped hands after attempting to save them. “I had to be the one that pulled my daughters out of the water.”
Rochel’s body was placed aboard a private plane Wednesday for transport to New York and then to Israel for burial.
Despite the tragedy, Shlomo Nisanov expressed his continued faith.
“I love you, God. I know you know best,” he said. “I don’t understand how my daughter was in the front — she came up mostly unscratched — and my daughter was in the back, ended up being all the way under the pier.”
“Parents are not supposed to bury the children,” he added. “Children are supposed to bury the parents.”
The investigation into the fatal crash is being conducted by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
Copyright 2025 by WPLG Local10.com - All rights reserved.
