A marriage proposal took a tragic turn this past week when a man died while proposing to his girlfriend underwater at the Manta Resort in Tanzania.
The incident took place at the Manta Resort’s “Underwater Room,” a floating three-level room that floats anchored about 250 meters/820 feet from the shore, in the waters of a marine conservation area.
According to those news reports, Steven Weber Jr apparently freedove alone from the surface down to a window of the underwater room, where he pressed a note in a plastic bag against a window to his girlfriend Kenesha Antoine that read:
“I can’t hold my breath long enough to tell you everything I love about you. But… Everything I love about you I love more every day.”
The flip side of the note asked Antoine to marry him.
Those reports say Weber never made it back to the surface, and his body was later recovered.
According to a September 20th Facebook post by Antoine that has since gone viral and been picked up by a number of news outlets,
“There are no words adequate enough to honor the beautiful soul that is Steven Weber, Jr. You were a bright light to everyone you encountered. You never met a stranger, and you brought so much joy to so many people. You were kind, compassionate, you regularly made me cry with laughter, and you showered me with a love like none I’d ever experienced.
“You never emerged from those depths, so you never got to hear my answer, ‘Yes! Yes! A million times, yes, I will marry you!!’ We never got to embrace and celebrate the beginning of the rest of our lives together, as the best day of our lives turned into the worst, in the cruelest twist of fate imaginable. I will try to take solace in the fact that we enjoyed the most amazing bucket list experiences these past few days, and that we both were so happy and absolutely giddy with excitement in our final moments together.”
Local authorities are investigating the incident, and friends of Weber’s have begun a crowdfunding campaign to pay for the expenses related to returning his body back to the USA and subsequent burial.
(Image credit: Facebook)
