A Florida woman says that her husband drowned while trying to save her from a rip current off Miami Beach over the weekend, WINK News reports.
“He did the most amazing thing in the world that he gave his life for me,” Kendra Smith said of her husband, 34-year-old Sherrod Whittington. “I appreciate that, I really do, and I’m going to honor him until the day I die because of that. … He’ll always be my hero.”
According to the report, Whittington was not breathing when he was pulled out of the water Sunday afternoon as other swimmers who were caught in the currents were rescued by lifeguards.
“I was trying to hold on to him; he was trying to hold on to me,” Smith recalled. “In some kind of wave, he lost his grasp and then he got me back again; he found me again.”
Whittington told lifeguards to save his wife first.
“I heard him hollering and screaming, and I was hollering and screaming for them to save him and begging them, ‘Please save him,’” Smith added.
Whittington was pronounced dead at the hospital.
Miami Beach Fire Rescue Capt. Charlton Price said that Whittington had managed to save Smith before getting pulled under himself.
“Life is just so short. I would have never guessed in a million years that we would go have fun, and the next thing you know, he’s gone,” Smith said.
Read more at WINK News.