Butler County man dies after getting caught in Ocean City current, but son pulled to safety

A Butler County man died Friday after getting caught in a strong current while swimming with his 7-year-old son in Ocean City, Md., but the man’s wife managed to rescue the boy.

Jessica White, of Prospect, said she and her nephews were playing with water guns on the shore outside their 19th Street hotel after 8 p.m. while her husband, Joshua White, 33, and her 7-year-old son went into the Atlantic Ocean.

“I heard my son yell so I looked up. As I looked up, his boogie board went flying through the air, so I swam out to get him,” White said.

White said no lifeguards were stationed at the beach.

“There was nobody around,” White said. “I looked around. There was nobody.”

White said she was able to fight the current and save her son, but when she turned around, she saw her husband was still in the water waving his hands.

“I hopped back in as well to get him,” White said.

Her son ran to the nearby boardwalk for help. By the time White had pulled her husband of six years halfway to shore, she said her sister’s boyfriend and three other men rushed in to help her bring her husband the rest of the way to shore.

An ambulance had arrived by the time they got Joshua White to shore. Jessica White said paramedics performed CPR on her husband before rushing him to a hospital. When White got to the hospital, she said she was told that her husband had gone into cardiac arrest and died.

Rip currents are powerful channels of fast-moving water that occur at beaches with breaking waves, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The agency’s guide on what to do when caught in a rip current advises people to not try to fight the current head-on — instead, people should swim parallel to the shore to get out of the current and then swim back to land at a slight angle.

Rip currents account for about 100 deaths a year in the United States, according to the agency.

Joshua White, a father of three children, enjoyed spending time with family and doing outdoors activities such as fishing, swimming, camping and riding all-terrain vehicles, according to his obituary. A visitation is scheduled for 5 to 7 p.m. Friday at the Spencer D. Geibel Funeral Home in Butler Township and will be followed by a prayer service.

Jessica White said her 7-year-old son has been swimming a lot since the accident in an attempt to feel closer to his father.

“I think it is his way of coping,” White said.