HEARTBREAKING

Man Who Drowned Saving Family Was Ukraine Refugee

Mykhailo Myroshnychenko, 19, had just moved to Jacksonville when he jumped into the water to help a family caught in a rip current.

A man who drowned while trying to rescue a family caught in a rip tide off Neptune Beach was a 19-year-old Ukrainian refugee who’d only recently moved to the U.S. to escape the war back home. Mykhailo Myroshnychenko was with his two brothers at the beach when he saw a father and two children struggling in the water. Police said he went into the water at around 8 p.m. Tuesday night, and his body was recovered early the next morning. Myroshnychenko had managed to push a young girl in the water close enough to her father so that he could grab her, but the family said they then lost sight of him, according to First Coast News. He died just days before his 20th birthday. “So terrible because we must today call to our parents in Norway and we have small brothers and sisters in Norway,” his brother, Viktor Myroshnychenko, was quoted saying. “And we bought a present for him, but we can’t gift him his present now. It’s really so terrible for us.”