A stabbing rampage destroys a Florida Keys family, and now there’s sadness and a void
Pascal-Rene Zue Weisberger began volunteering at the Upper Keys Humane Society in Key Largo about five years ago. He needed the service hours for school and the Boy Scouts.
But, almost immediately, the boy began to donate his time simply out of his love for the animals. When school was out for summer or winter break, Pascal would come in four or five days a week, said Karla Perrine, the shelter manager.
And he came in every Sunday. It got to the point where the shelter began depending on him for day-to-day work, Perrine said.
“If he missed one day, sometimes I couldn’t do my job,” she said. “He knew every single animal. He knew how old they were, how long they’ve been here and their diet.”
Pascal, who was stabbed to death Thursday at age of 14, will be so missed at the shelter that leaders have decided to name the lobby in his memory.
Pascal’s 17-year-old brother is a suspect in his murder and in the stabbing of their father at their Islamorada home.
Two local artists will paint a portrait of Pascal, and there will be a plaque inscribed with a quote from 18th century German philosopher Immanuel Kant that reads, “We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.”
Those who knew Pascal are having a difficult time reconciling how violently he died with the sweet boy who not only cared and fed animals at the shelter, but would also bring books in to read to them.
“He used to read to the doggies,” Perrine said. “He was amazing. He was a very delicate person. He was so full of love. Everything was good in his eyes.”
Pascal’s 17-year-old brother Daniel is in the intensive care unit at Ryder Trauma Center at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami after throwing himself into the path of a pickup truck at mile marker 87 on U.S. 1 around 7 Thursday night.
That was almost exactly the same place where police looked for him all day using helicopters and dogs. They focused their search in and around the area of the Executive Bay Club townhouse community at mile marker 87.2 where the Weisberger boys lived with their father, Ariel Poholek. He was also stabbed multiple times and was gravely wounded.
Daniel Weisberger killed his little brother around 4 a.m. in a bedroom inside their home, using a large knife to “slash, stab and butcher” Pascal, Monroe County Sheriff Rick Ramsay said.
Poholek, 43, went inside the room to investigate the commotion and was immediately attacked. Ramsey said he was stabbed several times in the neck. The boy held his father hostage for about two hours before he managed to escape and go to a neighbor for help, police said.
The neighbor called 911, and medics flew Poholek to Jackson South Medical Center, where he was in stable condition in the intensive care unit Friday afternoon. He is expected to recover, his brother, Zachary James, said on his Facebook page.
“We lost a nephew, son, grandson and brother at the hands of a nephew, son, grandson and brother,” James wrote Friday afternoon. “It is unspeakable and our hearts are forever broken.”
The family tragedy has shaken a tight-knit Keys community, not unaccustomed to crime, but where murder is rare. The single-father-led family was well-known in Islamorada and Key Largo and was civically active through the Boy Scouts, environmental causes and in sports.
The community not only mourns Pacal, but Daniel as well. He began running afoul of the law in recent years and has a history in the juvenile justice system. But like Pascal, many people remember him as a bright kid who was also a promising athlete.
“He was a kid I cared about,” said Barry Wray, a close friend of Poholek, and also the running coach at Treasure Village Montessori School, where Pascal was in eighth grade, and from where Daniel graduated four years ago.
“How did this all fall apart? That’s the thing we don’t know, and we don’t know how to fix it,” Wray said.
Ramsay said part of Daniel’s criminal background includes at least one instance of violence against Pascal, as well as a gun charge.
A law enforcement source said Daniel went to live with his mother, Joceline Nguema, in St. Lucie County around December, but returned a few months later. Nguema could not be reached for comment on Friday.
She and Poholok divorced in 2006, according to Martin County court documents. Poholek has had custody of the boys ever since.
The end of the marriage did not mean the end of legal wranglings, however, according to filings in both Martin and Monroe counties. That includes an April 23, 2015, petition for injunction against domestic violence Poholek filed against Nguema on behalf of the children, according to the Monroe County Clerk of the Court. A judge dismissed the motion that same day.
The Miami Herald requested a copy of the petition Friday, and the person who answered the phone said she was instructed not to make the document available.
Ramsay said Nguema is cooperating with the investigation.
People who know the family describe Poholek as a devoted father to both boys.
“Ariel is just a lovely person,” said Nada Khalaf-Jones, who taught the children as a substitute teacher and whose daughter went to school with Daniel.
Of her time teaching Daniel, Khalaf-Jones said he did not display any type of behavioral problems that would foreshadow the type of violence police say he inflicted on his brother and father. Quite the opposite, she said.
“He was joyful at the time,” she said. “He was not angry or upset.”
But Pascal was definitely the one who was more engaged with school and activities. Wray, who is involved with several environmental movements in the Keys, took Pascal down to speak at a Key West City Council Commission meeting last year when the issue of banning single-use plastic items was being discussed.
“Just a passionate kid. Innocence is what describes Pascal,” Wray said. “He saw the world differently. He was curious and creative.”
Just weeks ago, Pascal was working on a long-term science project, trying to determine if the chemical makeup of plastic bottles found in the ocean is different now in times of COVID-19 than it was before the pandemic.
“He was so brilliant. His classmates said he would have cured coronavirus if he had enough time, he would have cured cancer,” Wray said.
Pascal likely inherited much of his science acumen from his father, who is a biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Marine Fisheries Service.
Wray, 61, has been friends with Poholek for about 10 years. He’s grateful Poholek survived the attack and is slowly on the mend. But like in many tragedies, surviving also means a lifetime of suffering and living with the torment of wondering what went wrong.
“It’s going to be extremely hard for him to put one foot in front of the other,” Wray said. “He has one son who has a very bleak future and another who isn’t with us any longer.”
This story was originally published May 8, 2020 at 6:06 PM.
