When Steve Zmuda heard sirens and learned there was a shark attack incident on the beach, he started calling his friends. What he never expected was that the swimmer in question was his own daughter, 17-year-old Charlize Zmuda.

Steve recalled the time he learned the news every parent dreads. “I said ‘Is it a fatality… do we know them’ … ‘Steve I have to tell you, It’s Charlize’ … I said ‘you’re joking’… I screamed, all the neighbours came running out.”

Steve desperately tried to reach his wife, Rene. However, he couldn’t gather the strength to tell her that their daughter was the one killed in the shark attack.

“[Steve] couldn’t talk and I didn’t know what was going on … I screamed at him ‘just tell me!’ … not for one second thinking it would be…,” Rene Zmuda told the Daily Telegraph.

“I knew it was bad because he couldn’t speak… but in my head I was like ‘where do I need to be?’”

At that moment, Rene rushed to the ambulance because she needed to see her daughter herself in order to believe.