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Dolphin breaks woman's ankles after jumping into family boat

By Marilyn Malara
A Spotted Dolphin leaps in front of the boat's wake just prior to being observed by Research Associates of the Dolphin Communications Project (DCP) in the Bahamas. Far away in the Pacific, another dolphin accidentally leaped into a family's boat, causing cuts on its nose and tail and breaking a woman's ankles. Photo by Joe Marino/UPI
A Spotted Dolphin leaps in front of the boat's wake just prior to being observed by Research Associates of the Dolphin Communications Project (DCP) in the Bahamas. Far away in the Pacific, another dolphin accidentally leaped into a family's boat, causing cuts on its nose and tail and breaking a woman's ankles. Photo by Joe Marino/UPI | License Photo

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DANA POINT, Calif., July 2 (UPI) -- A dolphin missed its mark on Father's Day when it accidentally leaped into a family's boat and broke Chrissie Frickman's ankles as well as causing itself a few bloody injuries.

The Frickman family -- including their 12-year-old son and 16-year-old daughter -- was returning to Dana Point Harbor when a pod of dolphins closed in on the their location. For a few moments, the four were ecstatic at the animals' arrival, but one soon came in too close, making a leap over the vessel's railing and entering the boat.

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"It hit my wife and knocked her over, and punched my daughter," Dirk Frickman told the Orange County Register after the incident. His wife suffered two broken ankles from the incident.

Frickman pulled his injured wife from under the flopping dolphin and immediately called the Orange County Sheriff's Department Harbor Patrol from the boat's radio, the newspaper says. According to him, the officer "came zipping out" to the family, and when he saw the situation he was taken aback.

"He looked at the boat and said, 'Oh, my god. I've never seen this before," Frickman told the outlet.

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After getting Chrissie and their daughter Courtney, 16, off the boat an on their way to a hospital, Dirk Frickman had a new challenge: "I had this 350-pound dolphin in my boat," he said of the animal, who had suffered cuts on its tail and nose and had bled all over the boat. "There was no way to get it off the boat."

The Register reports that Frickman drove his boat to a bait dock, where he and two workers found a way to remove the dolphin from the boat safely. They got a rope around the dolphin and pulled him up to the dock until he was over water, then quickly released the rope.

"The dolphin was hopefully saved," Frickman said. "It swam away with no problem."

He went on to say that the family learned a valuable lesson from the "bizarre" event -- to remember that dolphins are "still kind of wild" and to "stay a bit farther away." His wife is reportedly recovering from two broken ankles -- one with a clean break and the other with torn ligaments.

"I was scared for the dolphin," Chrissie Frickman, still recovering and in a wheelchair, told ABC10 news. She and her husband were also celebrating their 18th wedding anniversary on the day of the incident.

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"Like, I was kind of hoping it would just jump back out, but I knew that wasn't going to happen. I was scared for my kids, and, you know, you're like, 'Can they attack, how scared is it?' You know, just these crazy thoughts go through your head, but I'm sure it was just as traumatized as we were."

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