ST. PETE BEACH, Fla. — A father and his 10-year-old daughter drowned after getting caught up in a rip current Sunday evening at Pass-a-Grille Beach, according to the sheriff's office.
Deputies responded around 6:43 p.m. to the area after receiving reports of two people who were swept offshore, the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office said in a statement.
Deputies say 42-year-old Michael Stephens and his three daughters, aged from 10 to 20 years old, were out in the Gulf of Mexico when they noticed an outgoing current begin to strengthen.
Jessie Johnson, 20, helped get his girlfriend, 20-year-old Brittany Stephens, out of the water and returned to get Michael Stephens and 10-year-old Isabella Stephens, the sheriff's office said. The two, however, were said to have been too far from shore and the current had gotten stronger.
Trinity Stephens, 13, was able to call 911 and hand off the phone to someone else on the beach for help, deputies said.
The father and daughter were spotted by helicopter just before 8 p.m. about a half-mile off the coast before being pulled from the water by a team from the sheriff's office, Coast Guard and St. Pete Fire Rescue, the news release states.
Michael and Isabella Stephens were taken to an area hospital, where they later were pronounced dead. An investigation into the drowning remains ongoing, the sheriff's office said.
One of the responding deputies was Jillian Constant. She said there have been more and more calls coming in of people drowning.
"My major advice is [to] know your swimming abilities and know the swimming abilities of your minor children," Constant said. "Also pay attention to your weather and your rip current statements for that local area. Oftentimes, those things are very easily accessible by local weather apps."
Even for the best of swimmers, a rip current can overpower you.
"Rip currents are extremely dangerous," Constant said. "You could be an expert swimmer and still have trouble getting out of a rip current. My biggest advice for if you do get trapped in a rip current is to not fight the rip current and to swim parallel with the shoreline either right or left to exit the rip current."
There are places, Pass-a-Grille included, where rip currents are more common.
"Places like channels, passes, inlets are exceptionally dangerous because there is a concentration of water in that area that is being sucked out by a larger body of water," she explained. "So in cases like Pass-a-Grille, you have the Gulf of Mexico, and it's on an outgoing tide, it's sucking that water out of the pass and then it's incredibly strong versus just being on a beach where it's just an open area of water."
Experts say you need to watch out for tidal currents as well.
"Even a weak rip current, if it takes you into the inlet, now you’re dealing with a tidal current and tidal currents can go out thousands of feet," an adjunct professor at FIU, Stephen Leatherman said.
If you're on the beach and see someone struggling in the water, first responders urge you not to rush into the water to help them. Call 911 instead.
"The biggest thing is you need to call 911," Constant said. "Somebody needs to call 911 and they need to give a good location and description of where the swimmer is, what direction they're being pulled out and a good description of the swimmer of what they were last seen wearing.
"We really encourage people not to try to go in and be the hero and go after anybody that's already in the water. The last thing you want is unfortunately two victims in the water."
One woman lost her best friend to a rip current on Pass-a-Grille Beach after her friend jumped in to save others. Now that woman hopes officials will add lifeguards to the same area of Pass-a-Grille Beach. "In those areas, I think we need lifeguards near jetties and piers. Think about a life jacket on your child," Kathryn Bell stated.
Bell said her best friend, Samar Abukhdair, drowned in 2018 after jumping in to get her children out of a rip current.
"They were pulling the children out as she was holding the children up to them and she drown," Bell explained. "She didn’t make it."
Bell hopes everyone will educate themselves on what to do if caught in a rip current and hopes officials make safety their main priority on beaches.
"It was just very tragic and it shouldn’t have happened," Bell stated.