A dad, his two sons, and the dark secret that led to a deadly rampage in the Florida Keys
Daniel Weisberger lies in a Miami hospital’s intensive care unit. He is recovering from severe injuries after being hit by a truck.
The 17-year-old won’t be leaving to go home when he’s better. State officers from the Department of Juvenile Justice are inside his room. And police have a warrant for his arrest.
The Florida Keys teen ran in front of a pickup truck on the Overseas Highway. Investigators say he was trying to kill himself after going into hiding. Cops set up a dragnet to search for him after his younger brother and his father were stabbed in their townhouse.
Weisberger is accused of the rampage.
Now, Weisberger, while at Jackson Memorial Hospital, waits to learn whether he’ll be charged as a juvenile or as an adult. The Monroe County state attorney is deciding.
“We’ll ... review any reports and statements and then make a determination,” Keys State Attorney Dennis Ward said.
Officers with the Department of Juvenile Justice are with Weisberger inside his hospital room, said Adam Linhardt, Monroe sheriff’s office spokesman. A judge signed warrants on murder and aggravated battery charges earlier this week, Linhardt said.
Based on interviews with his uncle and his grandmother, Weisberger gradually spiraled out of control during his teen years. They say his mother was abusive and that the relationship with his father became tense.
It all came to a head in the early hours of May 7, when investigators say Weisberger stabbed his 14-year-old brother, Pascal, to death and slashed his father in the neck, sending him to the hospital with grave injuries. The violence happened at their Plantation Key townhouse.
THE SCENE
Detectives say Weisberger stabbed Pascal around 4 a.m. , and that his father, Ariel Poholek, 43, was attacked after he came into the room to find out what the commotion was about.
Zachary James, Poholek’s brother, said the scene unfolded differently.
James said Poholek, who is in stable condition at Jackson South Medical Center in Kendall, told him over the weekend that he never heard Daniel attack Pascal. He woke up in his own bed to Daniel stabbing him. In the middle of the violence, Poholek asked Daniel where Pascal was, James said.
“He said, ‘Pascal’s already gone,’ “ James said.
After being stabbed, Weisberger held his father hostage for about two hours, sometimes choking him until he passed out, James of Philadelphia, said in a phone interview from South Florida. Poholek then noticed his older son had left, so he ran to a neighbor’s home, and that person called 911.
THE SEARCH
Monroe County sheriff’s deputies arrived at 6 a.m., and could not find Daniel Weisberger. That’s when the daylong manhunt began.
Officers with other agencies, including Miami-Dade County, Homestead and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, aided in the search for the 17-year-old. Tactical teams used sniffing dogs to comb the area and check out potential hiding spots, including dumpsters.
Helicopters scanned the landscape below and near shore from Islamorada to Key Largo.
Weisberger eluded it all.
But the teen didn’t travel far. He was hiding in the woods in between the site of the stabbing, the Executive Bay Club at mile marker 87.2, and Founders Park, right next to the complex.
Around 7 p.m., more than 12 hours into the search, he darted out into U.S. 1 and was struck by the pickup truck. Medics airlifted him to Ryder.
THE FAMILY
Family and friends say the tragedy was the culmination of tension between the teen and his father.
Ariel Poholek is a single dad who raised his boys since getting custody of them in 2008. Friends and family say Poholek is a devoted father who gladly made sacrifices for his children, but he couldn’t get through to Daniel as he progressed through his teen years.
Daniel was angry a lot of the time and getting into trouble with the law. While his studies used to be a priority, he dropped out of high school about a year ago. Loved ones say his troubles were born out of early childhood trauma.
James said that his brother and their mother told him that Poholek’s ex-wife, Joceline Nguema, was mentally and physically abusive to the boys.
James and the teen’s grandmother, Carole Poholek, said Nguema had a hair-trigger temper, but she was more subtle with her abuse of the boys, until she wasn’t. Nguema could not be reached, and her attorney did not respond to messages.
“It was like water washing against a rock, this daily thing over and over and over,” Carole said.
GRANDMOTHER’S PERSPECTIVE
Carole Poholek, of Tampa, said she noticed Nguema’s temper pretty soon after the couple returned from Africa, where Ariel Poholek was a Peace Corps volunteer and Nguema a language specialist.
Carole Poholek said Nguema would get angry quickly and her son often had to calm her down. She theorizes that he became so used to her behavior he didn’t notice there was anything unusual going on.
“There’s a red blinking light, but you think it’s just a red blinking light. You don’t think, ‘Run,’ “ she said.
The couple divorced in Martin County in 2006, and she had custody of the children at first. Through constant legal battles, Ariel Poholek got custody of the children in 2008. He eventually moved from Martin County, where he was a biologist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, to the Keys, where he started working for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Fisheries Management Service.
In October 2013, Poholek took the boys to the Golden Glades train station, where they were supposed to depart with their mother for a visitation trip, James said.
Daniel, who was 10 at the time, decided right before he was to board the train that he did not want to go with Nguema, Carole said. Nguema became enraged, according to the grandmother.
Carole Poholek said Daniel got away from Nguema “by wiggling out of his shirt.”
After that incident, Carole said Nguema agreed not to see the children for a year. That turned into three years for Daniel Weisberger, who did not see his mother again until 2017, she said.
An incident a year later spelled the last time Pascal, who was on the autism spectrum and easily triggered, agreed to spend time alone with Nguema, Carole Poholek said. He went with her on a trip to Alabama to stay with a friend of hers. When he came back, he was so stressed out he began trying to cut himself and tried to burn himself with a clothing iron, his uncle and grandmother said.
It’s not clear if the state Department of Children and Families got involved with the family. The agency has not responded to a query.
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ONCE HAPPY
Ariel Poholek’s mother and brother and those who know the family in the Keys said the father and two boys led a happy life together. They became well-known in the community and made many friends. Poholek was a Boy Scout master of his sons’ troop, and the boys were involved in volunteer work, school activities, including running, and environmental causes.
Pascal spent so much time volunteering at a Key Largo animal shelter that the lobby there was named in his honor last week following news of his death.
On Wednesday, Pascal’s school, Treasure Village Montessori, organized an event in his honor called “the Pascal Weisberger Day of Service.” Students and others in the area, including scouting groups, drew inspirational messages in chalk and performed community services, including shoreline trash cleanups, throughout the Upper Keys.
It is expected to be an annual event.
Treasure Village Principal Kelly Mangel called Pascal “a student who cared deeply about his community and served out of love and pride rather than obligation.”
James said the event was the perfect way to honor his nephew.
“We are deeply touched by the beautiful ways the community is honoring him by joining together to do such extraordinary good for the place he loved and was so proud to call home.”
DARK DAYS FOR DANIEL
His older brother’s mood grew darker as he got older, his family says, which resulted in stays in and out of the juvenile justice system. His father was often the one who had to call the police on him.
In January, Daniel brought home a gun. James thinks it was Pascal who first noticed the firearm. Regardless, when it was discovered, he threatened his family’s life. Again, the father called the police, and Daniel spent 21 days in a juvenile justice facility in Key West.
In the months before, Daniel and Nguema began speaking on the phone again, and when he was released from detention on the weapons charge, she drove down from her home in Port St. Lucie and picked him up. Carole Poholek said that for the first few weeks, the two got along, but it wasn’t long before Daniel began to get into trouble.
By March, he wanted to leave. Carole Poholek said her son had no choice but to let Daniel come home or the state would charge him with abandoning his child.
The arrangement appeared to be working at first, according to the family.
“Their relationship was restored during that time period to their normal bond,” Carole said. “He was in very good spirits when he got home.”
But, he was under house arrest, and Daniel still relied heavily on state mental health services to help him with his problems. When the novel coronavirus pandemic hit and the subsequent lockdowns were issued, the family could not access the services.
“As can be predicted, things did deteriorate,” Carole Poholek said.
She said the tragedy rests not only with Pascal’s death and her son’s serious physical wounds at the hands of his oldest son. The family also mourns for Daniel, who could face years in prison if convicted.
“There is so much to say, 18 years of story to tell, so much heartache, so much grief, loss no words can describe,” she said. “Pascal dead, Daniel’s life over, and their dad, Ari, in the hospital with this excruciating knowledge, that in the end, he could not save his children and lost what was most precious.”
This story was originally published May 15, 2020 at 4:41 AM.
