‘Very sad’: Neighbors react to SUV found in Sea Pines lagoon on Hilton Head
People staying in the Beach Lagoon neighborhood in Sea Pines woke up to a disturbing sight Wednesday morning.
The quiet beachfront neighborhood was the site of a tragedy Tuesday evening when a 2000 Lincoln SUV ended up in the lagoon, killing its driver and sole occupant.
The event went unnoticed until the next morning, when authorities received reports of a car submerged in the lagoon.
Authorities pulled out the vehicle and identified the deceased driver as 90-year-old Bluffton resident Helen Connors.
Friday afternoon, the neighborhood was peaceful. People cycled, jogged, and walked their dogs beneath the shady oak trees that line the neighborhood.
The Island Packet spoke with David White, who is staying at a property close to the site of the incident. We encountered White as he was walking his dog, Kaiser.
Car went unnoticed until the following morning
White and his wife, Mary Carol, own property on South Beach Lagoon Drive. They have been visiting Hilton Head for the past 32 years.
On Tuesday night, White and his wife came home from dinner around 8:30 p.m. They didn’t notice anything, but as they got into bed, their dog, Kaiser, suddenly began to bark.
“I told him to be quiet, but obviously he had heard something out here,” White said. “I didn’t think anything about it.”
The next morning, White looked outside and saw a boat in the lagoon. At first, he thought the Sea Pines CSA was spraying for mosquitoes.
“I thought, oh, it’s just a boat, and then I went out on the beach with the dog,” White said.
He came back to see fire trucks and police in front of his property, and realized something else was happening.
He saw that an SUV had been pulled halfway out of the lagoon. The vehicle appeared to have gone into the water nose-first, and the hatchback was flipped open.
A big, blue tarp had been wrapped over the side of the vehicle, signaling to White that “nobody should be looking in there,” he said.
White said he did not know the woman who died, but still found the incident “very sad.”
“It’s tragic,” White said. “Whenever you see something like that, it’s upsetting.”
Asked if he thinks any barriers should be put up around the lagoon, White said “we’ve got to be practical about it.”
“Do we like the way it looks now, without the barrier? Sure,” White said. “But it’s obviously happened too many times, and it’s become a bit of a concern.”
What happened?
At around 7:50 a.m. Wednesday, Beaufort County deputies received a report of a submerged vehicle in the lagoon near South Beach Lagoon Drive in the Sea Pines community.
State troopers believed the SUV rolled into the lagoon at around 7:30 p.m. Tuesday evening and went unnoticed until the following morning.
Authorities pulled the 2000 Lincoln SUV out of the water. The driver and sole occupant of the vehicle was pronounced dead.
Troopers are still trying to learn how the SUV ended up in the water, according to previous reporting from The Island Packet.
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.
Passengers drowned in 2023 incident
Over three years prior and in the same neighborhood, two passengers in a Mazda drowned after the car ended up in 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 6, 2026 at 5:00 AM.
