A man died Wednesday after he drowned in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, three months after a 7-year-old girl who was digging in the sand became completely buried in a hole at the lifeguard-less beach and died.
Lauderdale-by-the-Sea deputies and Pompano Beach Fire Rescue responded to 4500 El Mar Drive shortly before 1:30 p.m. Wednesday after the regional communications center was called about a possible drowning, the Broward Sheriff’s Office said.
Good Samaritans were attempting to save the man’s life when deputies and fire rescue arrived, the Sheriff’s Office said. The man, whose identity was not released, was taken to Holy Cross Health in Fort Lauderdale and was pronounced dead there.
Homicide and Crime Scene units are investigating the circumstances of the drowning.
“We have just learned that the gentleman who was transported from our beach to the hospital today sadly passed away,” Mayor Edmund Malkoon said in a statement shared by the town on X, formerly Twitter. “Our deepest condolences and sympathy are with his family and friends. I want to thank our first responders and the good Samaritans who reacted swiftly to try to save his life.”
On Feb. 20, not far from Wednesday’s incident, 7-year-old Sloan Mattingly and her 9-year-old brother Maddox, of Indiana, were buried in a five-to-six-feet deep hole that collapsed in on them. Sloan was completely buried underneath her brother and was pronounced dead at a hospital after she was removed from the hole without a pulse. Her brother survived.
The small town of Lauderdale-by-the-Sea does not have lifeguards on its beach, and after Sloan’s death, town elected officials revived a decades-old debate about whether it is now time to use taxpayers dollars to get them. The commission at a special meeting held in the wake of Sloan’s death did not take any immediate action at the time but asked the town manager for further research into the issues.
Pompano Beach Fire Rescue patrols the beach, in addition to the Broward Sheriff’s Office and volunteers with the town’s Citizen Observer Patrol. The Sheriff’s Office and a spokesperson for Lauderdale-by-the-Sea did not respond to a question about whether the beach was being patrolled at the time Wednesday.
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