Horry County Jury Returns Record $20.73 Million Against Myrtle Beach Lifeguard Contractor in Drowning of Father Caught in Rip Current

Zerihun Wolde, a 41-year-old father visiting Myrtle Beach from Maryland, went into the ocean with two of his children around midday on August 24, 2018. The family was staying near the Sea Crest Resort, on a stretch of sand where lifeguard coverage was provided not by the city but by Lack's Beach Service, a private contractor that had held the franchise for decades. A rip current pulled Wolde and the children away from shore. Trial testimony established that he struggled visibly for ten to fifteen minutes, calling for help and gasping between waves, before bystanders, not lifeguards, finally pulled him from the water. He was pronounced dead at a hospital a short time later.

The evidence that emerged in the lawsuit brought by Meswaet Abel, Wolde's fiancee and the personal representative of his estate, painted a damning picture of how Lack's ran its operation. The lifeguard stand closest to where Wolde went under was unmanned during a lunch break, with no flags posted to warn swimmers about the rip current risk that day. Lack's admitted at trial that it was understaffed and short of its required ratio of mobile lifeguards. Its guards had not completed the 40 hours of open-water rescue training called for in the company's franchise agreement with the city.

At the center of the case was the company's dual-role staffing model: the same employees responsible for watching the water were also tasked with renting out beach chairs and umbrellas for the company's commercial side. The United States Lifesaving Association had warned for years that lifeguards cannot safely scan the surf while running a rental business, and the plaintiff's team argued that Lack's kept the model anyway because it was profitable.

Christopher Pracht, who tried the case as lead counsel from his Anderson, South Carolina practice and now practices with Alexander Shunnarah Trial Attorneys, presented the estate's case alongside Mullins McLeod and Cooper Wilson of the McLeod Law Group. In July 2022, after a week of testimony in the Horry County Court of Common Pleas, the jury found Lack's negligent and reckless. It awarded $3.73 million for Wolde's conscious pain and suffering, $10 million on the wrongful death claim, and $7 million in punitive damages, $20.73 million in all, widely reported as the largest wrongful death verdict ever returned in Horry County, a venue with a reputation for conservative juries.

Lack's appealed, challenging the sufficiency of the evidence and the punitive award. On July 16, 2025, a unanimous panel of the South Carolina Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment in full, writing that there was plentiful evidence that Lack's had repeatedly and knowingly breached the standard of care for professional lifeguards.

The verdict changed how the Grand Strand guards its beaches. In its wake, local governments moved to end dual-role lifeguarding, separating water surveillance from beach-equipment sales, the practice the jury had just priced at $7 million in punitive damages.