Amerson River Park Drownings Follow a Long, Known Pattern

Three people drowned at Amerson River Park on July 15, 2025, adding three names to a list that already held eight deaths there since 2020. Two sisters, 7 and 10, drifted off a sandbar in the Ocmulgee River in Macon, Georgia. Johnny Collins III, 28, went in after them and did not come back up.

The park had no lifeguards. A county rule already required children under 16 to wear a life jacket. Bibb County Coroner Leon Jones had told the public a year earlier to stay away.

Search Crews Recovered Three Bodies by Afternoon

The Bibb County Sheriff’s Office said the call came at 7:29 p.m. on Tuesday, July 15, 2025. Division Chief Michael Williamson of the Macon-Bibb fire department said the girls had been in a shallow stretch when they started drifting into deeper water, and the man followed them in.

Sgt. Christopher Williams said the three had been on a sandbar. “The current will sneak up on you and it will drift you further out into the river,” Williams said.

Firefighters, a dive team, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, and later Georgia State Patrol joined the search. Boats worked the channel. Divers went in where the group was last seen. Just after 9 p.m., crews stopped because of darkness and said they would start again at 8 a.m. Wednesday.

THE NIGHT AND THE RECOVERY

1. July 15, 2025, 7:29 p.m.: Deputies get the drowning call at Amerson River Park.
2. July 15, 2025, just after 9 p.m.: Officials halt the search for lack of light. About 20 to 30 family members keep walking the banks in mud after dark.
3. July 16, 2025, 8 a.m.: Boats go back on the water.
4. July 16, 2025, 10:06 a.m.: Deputy Coroner Ronnie Miley pronounces Summer McRae, 7, dead.
5. July 16, 2025, 10:15 a.m.: Miley pronounces Johnny Collins III, 28, dead.
6. July 16, 2025, 2:58 p.m.: Miley pronounces Skyler Worthen, 10, dead. The park is set to reopen Thursday morning, July 17.

Family members said the girls were sisters and that Collins was the boyfriend of their mother. Samantha Taylor, his sister, said, “I never would have thought that a river would be the reason my brother is no longer here.” Friends called him Yung and said he worked downtown as a DJ.

Mark McKinnon, public affairs officer for DNR Law Enforcement, said none of the three were wearing life jackets, even though free jackets hang at the access points. Williams put the same warning in plainer terms: taking a swim in that river always carries a risk. Crews finished the recoveries at Amerson on July 16 in a single day, then cleared the park.

At Least 11 Drownings Since 2020

Local records compiled after the July search put the three deaths as part of a run of at least 11 drownings at Amerson River Park since 2020. In 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025, at least two people died there each year. Most were under 30.

NAMED DEATHS AT AMERSON SINCE 2020

The pattern is grimly familiar. Witnesses describe a group walking a trail, then deciding to swim. Someone tires, hits a drop, or gets pulled around a bend. Friends try to help and cannot. The dive team comes. The coroner walks the bank.

Betty Rivera’s 2022 death came with three other people pulled out alive. Raymund Ellison was on an inner tube in 2023 when his friends looked back and he was gone. Jaivon Whitest was swimming toward rocks that sat above the water; two friends made it and he did not. Eddren Chester went under twice near a rope swing on June 21, 2024, the same afternoon another man drowned a few miles downriver at the Ocmulgee Riverwalk while trying to help children.

Commissioners Weakened a Life-Jacket Mandate

After Whitest drowned in February 2023, Commissioner Al Tillman asked the Macon-Bibb County Commission to require a life jacket on every person who entered the river from the park, at any age, and to keep anyone under 16 out of the water without an adult. “These are not little bitty children that are drowning. These are young adults and grown people,” Tillman said.

On March 21, 2023, the commission voted. Commissioner Bill Howell’s amendment limited the wear rule to people under 16. Tillman said he was fine with the change. The girls who died in 2025 were 7 and 10. The wear rule covered them. It did not require Collins, 28, to put a jacket on.

THE 2023 WATER RULE

• Under 16: A person that age must wear a life jacket to enter the Ocmulgee from the park and may not go in without adult supervision.
• Every age: Anyone entering the water is supposed to have a personal flotation device with them.
• Penalties: A verbal warning, removal from the park, a fine of up to $500, and up to 60 days of public work.
• Enforcement: Park rangers and deputies, on a large oxbow with more than one access point.

The posted park rules at Amerson ban alcohol, loose pets, grills, fireworks, and overnight parking. They do not mention life jackets. County spokesman Chris Floore has said a ranger can cover only so much ground and that visitors should read the signs and take the free jackets on the posts.

Georgia already requires children under 13 to wear a jacket in a boat, and anyone on a tube or skis to wear one. The Amerson rule was meant to go further for people who simply walk in from the bank. Fire crews had already set numbered markers every 500 yards along the river in 2022 so a 911 caller could say where they were. Fire Chief Shane Edwards has said the bed drops three, five, even 10 feet, enough to put a weak swimmer under.

Coroner Leon Jones and His Public Warning

Jones has not treated Amerson as a freak hazard. On June 21, 2024, with Chester dead at the park and another drowning the same day on the riverwalk, he said the quiet part out loud.

Amerson Park is dangerous. Any way you look at it. This is the first day of the summer and we done had two drownings already in the same day. My suggestion, I know I’m going to get some heat for it but I don’t care: stay away from Amerson Park.

Leon Jones, Bibb County coroner, at Amerson River Park, June 2024

He has said he will repeat it until he is blue in the face. He is the official who has to tell families. Mayor Lester Miller’s office declined to talk about river safety in the days after the July 2025 deaths.

Deputy Coroner Lonnie Miley, on an earlier recovery, put the same idea without the politics: it does not matter if the person can swim. Once you are in that water, he said, it is an unknown situation. Kevin Gillens, 18, had family on the bank who said he could swim. He still died.

Why the Ocmulgee Pulls People off Sandbars

Amerson sits on an oxbow. From the bank, the river can look like a wide, wadeable channel with a sandbar in the middle and rocks showing. That is the trap. The current does not care about height or weight, Williams said, and it does not advertise itself when the surface looks calm.

Peg Jones, president of Save Our Rivers, told commissioners in 2023 that tree roots and old guardrails make “strainers” that can pin a person or a boat. She asked for red-yellow-green poles tied to flow, and for a chain across the access when the water is high. Howell said he liked a flag system too. The county’s working cutoff is 2,000 cubic feet per second. Above that, Macon-Bibb says it blocks the river until fire and parks staff agree the flow has dropped.

Officials had already closed river access earlier in summer 2025 for speed, then opened it again before July 15. About 17 days after the three deaths, they blocked it once more when the river topped that 2,000 cfs line. Edwards said the river can be dangerous under normal conditions and worse at high flow, and that staff would watch levels hour by hour.

Federal injury data count about 4,000 unintentional drowning deaths a year in the United States. Drowning is the leading cause of death for children ages 1 to 4, and it remains one of the top three unintentional injury killers through age 34. The Amerson list sits inside that national fact, on a free public bank with a rope swing and a tubing run, not a guarded pool.

Kayla Just’s Petition to Shut the Gates

The park reopened Thursday, July 17, 2025, as planned. That same week, Macon resident Kayla Just started a Change.org petition asking Macon-Bibb to shut river access at the most hazardous points, not only after a body is in the water. The petition said the access points keep reopening and leave swimmers at grave risk.

The split on the ground is not theoretical. People who use the park treat it as a swimming hole on hot days. The current does not. Some visitors want the gates closed for good. Others say they grew up there and will keep coming, and that a jacket and some sense are enough. A former lifeguard at the park after the July deaths said he would not trust those waters and still did not want the swimming area shut.

There are still no lifeguards. The park website’s emergency instruction is to call 911. Free jackets hang a few yards from the water. Two children who were required to wear them, and an adult who was not, went in without them on a Tuesday evening and died.

After the Deaths, a Ribbon Cutting

On August 27, 2026, NewTown Macon and Macon-Bibb cut a ribbon on a 1,500-foot extension of the Ocmulgee Heritage Trail at Amerson, with new paved parking tied to the James Hyde Porter Overlook. James Fritze, NewTown Macon’s president and CEO, said almost 400,000 people come to the river park each year and called it one of the most used parks in the community. Mayor Lester Miller called Amerson one of the park system’s jewels.

THE PARK BESIDE THE RIVER

• Size: Visit Macon lists 180 acres of forest and river oxbow at 2551 North Pierce Drive, with about seven miles of trails.
• Water: A two-mile tubing float runs from the Jay Hall Memorial Canoe Launch to the Bragg Jam takeout. There are no lifeguards.
• Hours: County rules put March through October hours at 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.
• Use: Fritze put annual visits at almost 400,000 as of the August 2026 ribbon cutting.

The trail is a walking and biking path. It is not a fence on the water. The same oxbow that draws those visits is the channel that took McRae, Worthen, and Collins, and at least eight other people since 2020. The jackets are still on the posts. The river is still open when the flow is under 2,000 cfs. Jones’s warning is still the clearest sentence anyone in local government has offered about swimming there.