Myrtle Beach lifeguards chose profit over safety. A jury awarded millions to victim’s family.

Zerihun Wolde had a one in 18 million chance of drowning when he stepped into the Atlantic Ocean in August 2018.

The section of Myrtle Beach shoreline the 41-year-old and his family chose on Aug. 24 of that year was supposed to have been monitored by trained lifeguards through Lack’s Beach Service, a company contracted by the city to provide personnel in exchange for the right to rent chairs and umbrellas to patrons at a profit.

The sale of chairs and umbrellas is also meant to pay for the lifeguarding services.

But that “dual role” method of guarding — which prevents lifeguards from paying attention to the water at all times — cost Wolde his life as he struggled to free himself from a dangerous combination of riptides and long shore currents, a jury decided.

On Friday, Wolde’s fiance, Meswaet Abel and the four children she and Wolde shared won $20.7 million in damages following a week long civil trial.

Abel filed her wrongful death suit in November 2019.

“This is something that I’ve been waiting for. I wanted to make a difference. I wanted to at least prevent other families from going through what we’ve been through,” Abel, who lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, told The Sun News following the verdict.

Jurors rejected claims by Lack’s Beach Service that well-placed red flags at the base of lifeguard stands should have alerted Wolde to possible dangers in the water.

“There was a lifeguard, there was a red flag posted very near where they set up, by their own photographic evidence,” Lack’s attorney, Joseph Thompson, said Friday. “Lack’s couldn’t have done anything for this family. The ocean is a tough environment.”

Chris Pracht, part of Abel’s legal team, said the family could have settled rather than risk getting nothing by taking it to trial.

By doing so, Abel forced hundreds of pages into evidence detailing the flaws in a “dual role life guarding system, a method that the U.S. Lifesaving Association says violates core principles of aquatic safety.

A July 19 motion, for example, pointed out that on the day Wolde drowned, Lack’s made $1,200 in sales — with the three lifeguard stations closest to him pulling in $1,173. -

Lack’s Beach Service is not certified through the association which on its website, says swimmers on beaches patrolled by certified lifeguards have a one in 18 million chance of drowning, according to 10 years of reports from its affiliates.

“This was never about money, this was about conduct. It was about stopping the conduct on the beach and saving people’s lives,” Pracht told The Sun News. “She chose she wanted to save lives rather than line her pockets, and that’s why we went to this courthouse.”

Lack’s Beach Service, which renewed its contract with the city just four months before Wolde’s death, holds a franchise agreement with the city through 2025.

“This case involves some of the most deliberate and conscious failures I have seen in my almost 25 years,” Abel’s lead attorney, Mullins McLeod, said during closing arguments inside a Conway 15th Circuit courtroom.

In a June 15 deposition, Aquatic Safety Research Group founder Thomas Griffiths said attentive lifeguards could have spotted Wolde’s distress.

“There’s very few visual signs of drowning. Someone who can swim first becomes distressed and when they’re distressed they can call out for help and they can wave for help,” Griffiths said, according to testimony included in the July 19 motion.

He said a swimmer in trouble that’s not able to quickly get help or save themselves “rapidly move from a distressed victim to a drowning victim.

“But Mr. Wolde apparently was a distressed victim that could have and should have been easily recognizable by attentive lifeguards,” Griffiths said.

Weslyn Lack Chickering, Lack’s general manager, said on the stand Friday the company carries a $3 million insurance policy but ended the 2021 fiscal year $473,350 in the red.

“We’re going to do everything we can to collect every cent of the verdict,” Pracht said.

When they weren’t in the courtroom testifying, the Abel children huddled closely together on their phones in a waiting room, talking or playing board games with each other, sharing smiles, jokes and hugs.

It’s a close-knit family that Abel said Wolde glued together.

“Money was not his thing,” she said. “Family was very important, and we wanted to continue that tradition. This is justice. Justice.”

This story was originally published August 1, 2022 at 5:00 AM.