Bystanders save screaming girl from ocean, search continues for brother

Carlos Pasco was enjoying an afternoon on the beach with his family near 42nd Avenue North around 4 p.m. Wednesday when he heard a woman scream.

“My kids had just gotten into the water and I saw that … (these people) were just screaming. They were just screaming, and I thought there was a shark because there was one kid that was down in the water,” said Pasco, whose family was vacationing in Myrtle Beach from New York.

Lisa Robertson, Sarah Robertson and Tyler Bischoff, all of Myrtle Beach, were in the ocean when they saw the young woman scream about 15-20 feet into the surf. Two others were with her.

“We saw three of them and then a wave came and we looked over and there was only two,” Bischoff said. “The mom was out on the beach just screaming to (the young woman) saying ‘come in’ and I guess they got too far.”

Sarah Robertson ran ashore to call 911. Bischoff started swimming toward the screams. A 12-year-old boy vanished in the deep blue water, his older sister was struggling to stay afloat and his teenage brother had slipped below the surface by the time Bischoff reached him.

A fellow beachgoer on a boogie board grabbed the girl and put her on his board to bring her in.

Bischoff grabbed the teen and started to swim ashore, but the Robertsons could see he, too, was struggling in the strong current.

When Pasco heard the screams and saw someone disappear under the water, he said he feared it was a shark attack.

“I told my kids to get out of the water because I didn’t know and then once I found out that it was actually a … floating person, I swam out to help,” he said.

Pasco grabbed the young man to help Bischoff.

The current was “extremely strong,” he said. “When I actually grabbed the gentleman, I wasn’t able to touch the ground and I was getting really scared because I had him by my arm and I was swimming with one arm and I’m not the best swimmer, but I just wanted to bring him in at that point.”

Sarah Robertson said she and a few other bystanders formed a human chain to help pull Bischoff, the unconscious swimmer and Pasco in to shore.

Another bystander began CPR on the boy until lifeguards arrived. The teen was taken to Grand Strand Medical Center. The girl — distraught over her 12-year-old brother, who was still missing in the surf, and her other brother, who was taken to the hospital — was treated on scene.

Paramedics transported the girl, her mother and a toddler, all of Darlington County, to the hospital to be with the young man.

“It’s just scary that it happened so fast. It just happened in the blink of an eye,” Sarah Robertson said. “They were all out there swimming and then all of a sudden one goes under.”

“I’ve lived here for 30 years and I’ve never pulled someone from the ocean so that was a first,” Bischoff said.

Another human chain with more than 20 beachgoers quickly formed to search the water for the missing 12-year-old as rescuers hit the surf in jet skis.

“We looked and we looked and we tried and we tried and we did more than a quarter-mile up this way, but nothing. It’s so upsetting because I have kids the same age,” said Xiomara Gonzalez, who was at the beach on vacation from Maryland and joined the chain to help in the search.

As the search ticked into its second hour, Gonzalez looked at the cloud the sun had long since ducked behind.

“Even the sun doesn’t want to come out,” she said.

Rescue officials described the missing swimmer as a 12-year-old black male wearing dark swim trunks. The U.S. Coast Guard and the Horry County Police Department joined the Myrtle Beach Police Department and Myrtle Beach Fire-Rescue in the search.

Officials continued searching into the evening as long as weather permited. Beach Patrol officers will remain on the beach over night, and the search will resume in the morning with water craft, weather and ocean conditions permitting, according to Lt. Joey Crosby of the Myrtle Beach Police Department.

This story was originally published July 6, 2016 at 5:07 PM with the headline "Bystanders save screaming girl from ocean, search continues for brother."