A young Washington State couple apparently drowned while snorkeling on their babymoon Saturday in Hawaii, a local outlet reported.
Sophia Kovalevich, 26, and Ilya Tsaruk, 25, both from Snohomish, went snorkeling near Ahihi-Kinau Natural Area Reserve off the island of Maui, as their second child was due to be born in December, according to KITV 4 Island News.
The couple were snorkeling with two other couples, including Tsaruk’s brother and his wife, but only the other couples came back ashore. All six persons had been wearing full-face snorkel masks, the outlet reported.
A man approached and told the other couples that he had heard someone screaming for help in the water. First responders pulled the couple out of the water and performed CPR.
“We don’t think that she suffocated in the mask,” Tsaruk’s brother Anatoliy Tsaruk told the outlet. “It might’ve just played a role in scaring her to panic. Everything is just speculation at this point.” (RELATED: Man On Vacation Drowns While Trying To Retrieve Friend’s Personal Item From Waterway)
Kovalevich’s birthday was expected to coincide more or less with her baby’s expected date of delivery, her sister Ilona Tsymbalyuk told the outlet.
“Her birthday is the day after Christmas,” explained Kovalevich’s sister Ilona Tsymbalyuk. “She was always talking about how she might deliver this baby girl that she was dreaming about on her birthday. They were planning to name her Melody because they both sang.”
The deceased couple are survived by their first child, 18-month-old Logan.
“There’s not a moment he’s alone,” Tsymbalyuk told KITV. “Everybody’s constantly rotating wanting to hold him (Logan) because they left a little bit of him and her in him.”
“Ilya and Sophia both loved the Lord and were always serving in the church and serving people around them,” a GoFundMe page set up to support Logan partly reads. “Sophia had the voice of an angel, and together with Ilya, they sang in a worship group in their church.”
The fundraiser has raised more than $137,000 out of its $140,000 goal as of the time of this report.
