Friends become heroes in Wrightsville Beach rip current rescue

WRIGHTSVILLE BEACH, NC (WWAY) — Three friends helped save a prominent local sports figure from a rip current at Wrightsville Beach last week.

Ryan Gillespie, Giuseppe Marturano, and Dashaun Brown said they were preparing for a beach soccer tournament on Thursday, May 21st, near Shell Island on the north end of the beach, when they heard cries for help to get a young boy and an adult woman caught in a rip current.

“You kinda just gotta go with your gut and do what’s right,” Brown said. “I can’t lie and say that I wasn’t scared or like that I was going to drown. But I figured I need to save somebody’s life.”

Gillespie and Brown entered the water to help the pair.

“When we got out there, realized very quickly that we were in a really, really bad situation,” Gillespie said. “It wasn’t, ‘Hey, let’s get them and swim them back to shore.’ It was like, ‘Let’s survive this.’”

Marturano remained on shore and called 911 while monitoring the situation.

“I grabbed my phone, called 911 and then just waited and described the best I could where they were,” Marturano said. “They did a great job of getting here. It felt like five minutes or so.”

Wrightsville Beach Ocean Rescue Director Sam Profitt was one of the first responders to arrive and focused on bringing the child back to shore when he encountered an adult woman who was fully submerged in the water.

Profitt, along with members of the Wrightsville Beach Police Department, helped bring both victims to shore, where rescuers began lifesaving efforts on the woman.

Gillespie said watching first responders work to save her was difficult.

“I couldn’t sleep for two days, just not knowing what happened to her,” Gillespie said. “I knew that she had a pulse at the end and they saved her, they brought her back. But when they pulled her out, she was facedown in the water. I could not help her anymore.”’

Profitt said conditions that day created a moderate risk for rip currents and warned about how quickly dangerous situations can develop in the ocean.

“Even the best swimmer’s not going to be able to swim against a rip current,” Profitt said. “People get caught in them and they start to panic. Once you start panicking, the drowning process starts and it can go from you being fully fine to fully submerged in under two minutes.”

Gillespie said he later spoke with the sister of Nicole Woods, the UNCW women’s basketball head coach, who thanked the men for helping to save her sister and her nephew.

In a statement from UNCW,  it said, “UNCW Athletics is aware of a water-related incident involving women’s basketball head coach Nicole Woods. Our thoughts are with Nicole and her family as she focuses on her recovery. Team operations will continue under the leadership of associate head coach Cherie Lea.”

Marturano called his teammates heroes for risking their own safety to help strangers in distress.

“They’re both heroes in my eyes,” Marturano said. “They made selfless actions that night because they have friends and family of their own and they decided to completely put that all aside and just say, ‘I’m going to help these random people.’”

WWAY reached out to Coach Woods for comment, but did not hear back.