Driver pronounced dead after car found in Hilton Head lagoon, troopers say
Editor’s note: After this story was published, the Beaufort County Coroner’s Office identified the victim as Helen Connors, 90, of Bluffton.
The driver and sole occupant of a 2000 Lincoln SUV was pronounced dead Wednesday after officials found the car in the lagoon of a Hilton Head Island gated neighborhood, echoing another fatal incident that happened down the street in 2023.
State troopers believe the SUV rolled into the lagoon Tuesday evening and went unnoticed until the following morning. Beaufort County deputies received the report of the submerged vehicle around 7:50 a.m. Wednesday after the call was transferred from fire crews, a sheriff’s office spokesperson said.
Authorities blocked off South Beach Lagoon Road in the Sea Pines community as they pulled the white SUV from the water around noon Wednesday. A coroner’s van arrived at the scene shortly after.
Most homes in the oceanfront Beach Lagoon neighborhood are built around lagoons. In the area where the Lincoln was pulled from the water, there is no infrastructure separating the street from the grassy slope leading down to the lagoon.
Cpl. Nick Pye, a spokesperson for the South Carolina Highway Patrol, said investigators believed the car slipped into the lagoon around 7:55 p.m. Tuesday. He would not specify how this time was determined.
Troopers are trying to learn how the SUV ended up in the water, Pye said — whether the car had veered off the roadway while driving through the neighborhood or was backing up from a nearby driveway when it slipped down the embankment.
“There’s just not a lot of evidence yet of what exactly happened,” Pye told The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette. “We’re still trying to figure out which direction the vehicle was driving.”
The Beaufort County Coroner’s Office had not identified the deceased driver as of Thursday afternoon.
Passengers drown in 2023 incident
Nearly three years prior and in the same neighborhood, two passengers in a Mazda drowned after the car slid into a lagoon while backing up from a driveway on Beach Lagoon Road. Hilton Head men Michael Weingarten, 77, and Neil Hilsen, 81, were pronounced dead while the driver, Weingarten’s brother, was able to escape the sinking vehicle uninjured.
The following year, Weingarten’s wife sued the Sea Pines Resort and other defendants for wrongful death. Court documents alleged the community was liable in the incident for leaving the lagoon’s edge and its steep slope “completely unprotected” behind the private driveway, while other areas in the neighborhood used flower beds, wood pilings and fencing to prevent cars from driving into the water.
That lawsuit remained pending as of Thursday, according to Beaufort County court records.
This story was originally published April 2, 2026 at 1:52 PM.
