Brooklyn family says they found subway shark on shore

A Brooklyn family says they were among the first to come in contact with a dead baby shark at Coney Island last week and were surprised that what was apparently the same fish turned up on a New York City subway train.

Alicia Vicino said her son and daughter love watching Shark Week on the Discovery Channel and were excited to hold a real shark in their hands last Tuesday, after a lifeguard fetched the carcass from the surf.

“The were very sorry that it died, and they were very upset to see it on the subway,” said Vicino, a 41-year-old event planner from the Bergen Beach section of Brooklyn. “It was so weird.”

After posing for some photos with the shark, they left it on the beach, but some teenagers came up who wanted to take it, she said.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority discovered a dead shark shortly after midnight on Wednesday on an N train at Queensboro Plaza.

Witnesses reported that the shark had stunk up the subway car, and photographs of the scene showed a shark under a train car seat with a cigarette in its mouth next to a can of the energy drink Red Bull. The MTA said it threw the shark in the garbage and cleaned the subway car.

Newsday was unable to verify a report in the New York Post that a plumber from Bensonhurst claimed responsibility for putting the shark on the train.

A New York City Police Department spokesman said if the responsible person were found, he or she would not be charged for littering because police would need to witness the act.

Vicino said relatives who saw both their photographs of the shark and those published by news media made the connection that it could be the same fish.

“It looks exactly like our shark,” she said. Though her kids, 14, and 10 years old, were excited by their brush with the ocean’s most terrifying predator, they were also a little freaked out. “They were scared to go back in the water,” she said. “Luckily, the summer’s almost over because they are probably not going back in the water.”