Couple Riley Whitelum and Elayna Carausu brought their two young kids to a Thai island with a beach known by locals for having hugely aggressive monkeys
An influencer dad was forced to punch a monkey to save his son after their family cluelessly visited a beach notorious for vicious monkey attacks.
Influencer couple Riley Whitelum, 38, and Elayna Carausu, 29, were in Thailand with their sons Lenny, five, and Darwin, one, when they visited an island beach known by locals for its aggressive monkeys.
While the family had spent time relaxing on a beach on one of the Ko Phi Phi Islands, one monkey decided to launch itself at one-year-old Darwin.
Luckily, Riley managed to scare them off after picking up his son and taking a swing at the monkeys.
Despite his heroic actions, he was left with bites and scratches, and the family required shots for tetanus and rabies.
The couple admitted in a video posted to YouTube they did “no research” before heading to the beach, and if they had known it was famed for monkey attacks they wouldn’t have gone.
The family first arrived at the beach in the morning and tried to attract monkeys for their sons to see to no avail.
They came back around sunset the same day and managed to spot the animals.
After the group of monkeys got closer to the family, they made their way to the family’s bag, which contained money, passports, phones and wallets.
When Riley approached the bag to get his belongings back, one monkey lunged at him and then his one-year-old son.
Wife Elayna, who had been snorkelling at the time, had no idea what had unfolded on dry land.
‘”That’s a monkey tooth,” Riley said, showing a cut in his hand in the video.
“I feel bad for punching a monkey, but they went for Darwin, it was scary. None of the people on the beach helped,” he added.
He was left with a deep bite mark that required 10 rabies shots from a local doctor, which Riley reportedly passed out from.
They explained the doctors told them they get two people a day coming in with monkey bites.
