GWINNETT COUNTY, Ga. — Derrick Moore, a metro Atlanta father and teacher, drowned saving a 10-year-old from a rip current. Now, the girl he saved is speaking for the first time with the one message she wishes she could give him.
Summer McCallum and her family were enjoying a day at Myrtle Beach on Friday evening when she suddenly found herself caught in a rip current.
“I was just scared and then my feet couldn’t touch the ground,” McCallum said.
[DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks]
Her uncle, Ernest McCallum, says when he noticed Summer struggling, he went in after her along with a few good Samaritans.
One of them was Moore, a Rockbridge Elementary School PE coach.
“I saw him coming and...he was like, ‘Grab my arm,’ and I grabbed it, but like he was also struggling once he got to me,” Summer said.
The others reached them with a float. Summer made it back to shore, but Moore did not.
“I thought he was still out there trying to, like, swim or something,” she said.
RELATED STORIES:
- Metro teacher dies saving girl caught in rip current along Myrtle Beach
- Witness: ‘There was no hesitation’ before teacher drowned saving girl
Moore taught at Rockbridge Elementary School in Stone Mountain and, before that, at Jolly Elementary School. The teacher spent his career looking after other people’s kids and his life ended doing just that.
“He just became a hero to all of us,” Ernest McCallum said.
Summer says she knows exactly what she would tell Moore if she could.
“I would say thank you. I really owe my life to you,” she says.
Moore leaves behind four children in Loganville.
The day this happened, Myrtle Beach was under double red flags, meaning no one should have been in the water.
[SIGN UP: WSB-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter]