A 13-year-old girl from Queens was killed in a jet ski crash in South Florida while celebrating her eighth grade graduation, her family said.
Rachel Aliza Nisanov was publicly identified Wednesday as the victim of the crash in Fort Lauderdale’s Intracoastal Waterway, the Miami Herald reported.
Nisanov was riding on a jet ski Tuesday piloted by her 16-year-old sister, Aviva, according to Miami NBC affiliate WTVJ. The girls’ father, Rabbi Shlomo Nisanov, was on another jet ski and jumped in to save them.
“My father doesn’t even know how to swim,” the girls’ brother, Yonah, told Miami CBS affiliate WFOR. “He jumped in. My sisters were unconscious. Their life jackets were on. They were lying flat, and my father jumped in and scraped up his hands, his feet and his back all over to save them.”
The family was on a guided jet ski tour when Aviva and Rachel’s watercraft jumped the wake of another vessel and crashed into a dock, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission told the Herald.
The Nisanov family are prominent members of Queens’ Bukharian Jewish community, and Rachel spent all of her schooling years at Bnos Malka Academy, an all-girls yeshiva in Forest Hills, the Herald reported. The school runs from pre-K through eighth grade, and the trip to Florida was a surprise to congratulate Rachel on graduating.
Rachel’s funeral was held Wednesday in Queens, while Aviva remained in critical condition at a hospital in Florida.
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