Jonathan Searle, 1975 & today. Images: screen capture & Jeanna Shepard
In 1975, 9-year-old Jonathan Searle appeared in Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster movie “Jaws.” In the movie, Searle and his real-life brother, Steven, memorably played two pranksters who caused mass panic on the beach after swimming into the ocean with a cardboard fin.
Now, 47 years later, Jonathan Searle has been appointed police chief on Martha’s Vineyard, the island where the iconic movie was filmed.
The town select board in Oak Bluffs voted this week to name Searle, an Edgartown police sergeant, as their next police chief, according to the Vineyard Gazette. When he succeeds the retiring police chief at the end of June, Searle will step into the real-life role of the fictional Martin Brody, Amity’s top cop, played by Roy Scheider in the movie.
“I’m finding the whole thing quite funny myself!” Searle, 56, told the NY Post amid all the fuss on the island located south of Cape Cod.
Searle grew up on Martha’s Vineyard, the son of a former Edgartown police chief, and has served in the department since 1986, the Gazette said.