Former Fort Mill football player identified as Lake Wylie drowning victim

An unusually gifted leader, an entertainer, a teammate worth having — all were descriptions Tuesday of T Lah Kwan Khalid Muhammad, 19, who drowned Monday while swimming in Lake Wylie at Windjammer Park.

A call came in to police just before 3 p.m. Monday when people were swimming and one man didn’t resurface. Authorities searched the area Monday, but had to call off the search due to bad weather. They pulled Muhammad’s body from the lake about 9:30 a.m. Tuesday.

The York County Coroner’s office identified Muhammad, who went by “Tee,” early Tuesday afternoon and planned an autopsy the same day.

Authorities said it appeared Muhammad was swimming to an island off of Windjammer when strong currents created problems. Chuck Haynes with York County Emergency Management said wind may have played a role.

“From what we hear it may have been currents from some strong winds,” he said. “That could have been a factor. We’re not talking about currents like you might think of them at the beach, or river currents.”

Windjammer has no dam immediately upstream to cause a strong water flow. The peninsula park sits on the northwest part of Tega Cay’s shoreline, well away from the downstream dam and hydro station.

Muhammad was found “at the approximate location where he was reported to be” on Tuesday, said Maj. David Nelson with the Tega Cay Police Department.

Muhammad graduated from Fort Mill High School in 2014, moving to the area as a sophomore. Head football coach Ed Susi remembers a defensive back who drew the right kind of attention.

“Tee was a kid who...he made everybody laugh,” Susi said. “He always had everybody smiling. He was the teammate everybody wanted to be around.”

Susi saw tweets and text messages roll in late Monday, as current and past players heard what happened to their teammate.

“When you’re a teammate in football, you’re always a teammate,” Susi said. “Those guys are hurting.”

Fort Mill High Principal Dee Christopher said some current students may have been present when the drowning happened, and the school will do whatever it can to help them or the Muhammad family.

“We love on them the best we can, and we try to remind them about the positive life he had,” Christopher said. “He was a difference maker. He had a unique ability to lead by calming people down, by making them laugh.”

Christopher said he could not forget his most memorable encounter with Muhammad, in part because the text of it is written out in a yearbook as Muhammad’s senior quote. Christopher chooses two seniors each year to interview at the homecoming pep rally. Muhammad volunteered. He then took the mic from the principal and roused the crowd with his patented line, “My name is Tee, but they call me Muhammad, baby!”

“It broke the place up,” Christopher said. “That kind of describes what his personality was.”

Muhammad never knew a stranger long, those who knew him said, and was as comfortable around administrators or teachers as he was fellow students. His disarming nature, Christopher said, will be missed by many.

“There’s a lot of people who would’ve benefited from knowing him, for 50 years,” Christopher said.

The drowning is the fifth on Lake Wylie this summer.

A 64-year-old woman drowned in two feet of water at the York County sandbar on June 14. On June 20, a 22-year-old man drowned near the U.S. National Whitewater Center north of the I-85 bridge.

Two days later, there were two more drownings. A 19-year-old Camp Thunderbird counselor drowned after an early morning jump from the Buster Boyd Bridge, and a 60-year-old Fort Mill man was found hours later in about 15 feet of water at River Hills Marina.

This story was originally published August 11, 2015 at 10:36 AM with the headline "Former Fort Mill football player identified as Lake Wylie drowning victim."