'EARTH CRISIS' by Harry Gould Harvey IV & Samantha Durand at Alyssa Davis Gallery, New York

News Anchor: This has been a summer of frightening animals in Rhode Island—a piranha in Coventry, an alligator in Lincoln, and now an unknown scary creature in Portsmouth. Whatever it was, was so big and so scary, a Fall River couple thought they were going to die. It’s a story you’ll see only here on Eyewitness News, a couple joins us now with their amazing ordeal. 

We haven’t heard anything quite like this around here before, imagine swimming mindlessly in the late afternoon sun when all of a sudden out of nowhere a huge horrifying creature roughly 15 feet long rocks your world. 

A Tuesday afternoon here at Teddy’s beach in Portsmouth—what happened gives new meaning to this danger sign. 

(woman sobbing) 

It was low tide and Rachel Carney was out beyond the danger sign floating on her back relaxing when big trouble struck. 

It rubbed up against your leg? 

It touched you? 

Woman: It touched me. That’s how I knew it was scaly. Man: Scaly! 

Rachel Carney’s fiance Dennis Vasconcelos had been fishing with a buddy on these rocks. He raced into the water. 

Man: It’s gonna getter. I grabbed her by the ass sor rear end and I grabbed her like that I whipped her in like that over her head I says, I whipped her in, I says Rachel, just swim, don’t turn around no matter what you hear right. Now I stood there and the things going like around me and stuff all right and I can see how big it is n stuff and it’s gigantic okay it has scales on it and stuff now all of a sudden for me to you away this big head comes up honest ta God it’s like a foot- a basketball, it’s like this big okay it comes up and it’s got these fangs like my fingers right the first this many in the bottom and about two or three at the top close layers inside okay and it’s like blackish on the top a little bit and it’s got a couple of scales that you can see and stuff and you can see a white starting under its neck and and it shoots water out of it’s nose right and out of its mouth it goes like this to me: 

ehhhhhhHHh 

The group thinks the creature was attracted to blood from a bloody injury on Joey Mellos’ leg. Joey was out in the water as he is right now cleaning his leg. 

Joey, how much blood was there? 

Joey: I bled for about an hour and a half and, an it just wouldn’t stop. 

Woman: I will not ever go in salt water again cuz I am that scared. I thought I was dead that day. Honest , I, eh...(inaudible). I thought I was dead, I thought I was a goner. 

You’re still in the moment, right now, two days later, you’re still in this moment aren’t you? 

Still a mystery what the creature was–state environment agents checked out the scene today and found nothing so the best guess comes from marine experts we checked with, they figured it may have been some type of alien invasive species that migrated here with a warm gulf current. Mother, Mother Ocean. 

Transcribed from Mother_Ocean.mp4