A former professional baseball player and father of three perished on Sunday while attempting to rescue swimmers from a rip current off the coast of South Carolina, according to authorities.
Chase Childers, who was briefly signed by the Baltimore Orioles, entered the water at 4:45 p.m. to assist a group of four or five swimmers struggling against the current off Pawleys Island, a coastal town about 45 minutes south of Myrtle Beach by car, according to the Pawleys Island Police Department.
“He died trying to save others,” the police department said of Childers, who had dived into the ocean with another individual.
According to investigators, Childers was the only swimmer who went missing when officials got on the site. His corpse was discovered around 6:15 p.m., following a search by officers, firefighters, and members of the United States Coast Guard.
We’d want to give further information about Sunday’s incident. The victim, Chase Childers, and another person went into the water to assist 4-5 people who were in difficulty. Sadly, Mr. Childers was also trapped in the rip current. He died while trying to save others.
— Pawleys Island PD (@PawleysIslandPD), July 15, 2025.
The Baltimore Orioles drafted Childers in 2009. According to a GoFundMe page set up to help Childers’ family, he went on to play minor league baseball before working as a police officer in Cobb County, Georgia for several years.
Rip currents are powerful channels of water that flow fast and are frequently seen along all of the United States’ coasts, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s website, with rates of up to 8 feet per second recorded.
According to NOAA, swimmers risk drowning if they resist rip currents while attempting to return to land. The National Weather Service cautions that they are the deadliest and most common hazard for swimmers in the waters around North and South Carolina.
“The Town is grieved by reports of a drowning over the weekend. We pray for the family members and express our condolences,” Pawleys Island Mayor Brian Henry stated in a social media post, citing claims that the drowning was caused by a rip current.
The municipality, according to him, “urges caution when entering the water at any time and alertness of the ocean’s currents, particularly during high surf.” A Pawleys Island town council will look at methods to lessen the possibility of future drownings, such as teaching tourists about rip currents and the dangers they can bring, Henry said.
“While Pawleys Island beaches are consistently rated as some of the best on the entire East Coast, we would like them to be known as the safest as well,” the mayor said.
