FILE -- Malcolm-Jamal Warner arrives at the Black Music Collective on Thursday, Feb. 2, 2023, at The Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)
San Jose, Costa Rica
Malcolm-Jamal Warner was apparently not alone when he drowned in Costa Rica over the weekend.
ABC News reports that the 54-year-old actor was swimming with his 8-year-old daughter when surfers spotted them struggling in the water.
According to police reports, one of the men dove in and brought the child back to safety on his board while a volunteer lifeguard pulled Warner and another surfer to shore.
Mike Geist, a lifeguard instructor at the beach and one of the men who helped in the rescue, said he started emergency care on Warner, but that was ineffective.
“There were two doctors who were also here just on vacation,” Geist said. “Between the three of them, they were able to perform CPR for more than 30 minutes, probably more like 45 minutes, and unfortunately, it was not successful.”
Costa Rica’s Judicial Investigation Department said the actor was on a beach on the Caribbean coast that Sunday afternoon. He was swimming at Playa Cocles in Limon province when a current pulled him deeper into the ocean.
Costa Rica authorities are calling Warner’s death an accidental drowning.
Warner worked for more than 40 years as an actor and director. He was best known for his role as Theo Huxtable on “The Cosby Show” during the 1980s and ‘90s.
His final credits came in TV guest roles, including a dramatic four-episode arc last year on the network procedural “9-1-1,” where he played a nurse who was a long-term survivor of a terrible fire.