A Washington State couple apparently drowned while snorkeling off Maui over the weekend. The pair, identified as 26-year-old Sophia Kovalevich and 25-year-old Ilya ‘Billy’ Tsaruk, died while snorkeling on their babymoon on the Valley Isle.
Kovalevich and Tsaruk, from Snohomish, had traveled to Hawaii with two other couples, including Tsaruk’s brother and his wife. They decided to go snorkeling on their first full day of vacation near Ahihi-Kinau Natural Area Reserve on Saturday.
On Saturday, the couples were wearing full face snorkel masks, and after running into trouble in the water, four of them came back in to shore.
“We don’t think that she suffocated in the mask,” explained Ilya’s brother Anatoliy Tsaruk. “It might’ve just played a role in scaring her to panic. Everything is just speculation at this point.”
As their concerns grew for Sophia and Ilya, a man approached the couples, saying he had heard someone screaming in the water for help. First responders were called to the area at around noon, eventually rescuing them and performing CPR.
The couple’s relatives said Kovalevich was pregnant, and the couple was expecting to welcome a baby girl, their second child, in December. The couple also leaves behind an 18-month old son, Logan, who’s now being taken care of by family.
“There’s not a moment he’s alone,” said Tsymbalyuk. “Everybody’s constantly rotating wanting to hold him (Logan) because they left a little bit of him and her in him.”
A GoFundMe page has been set up to help the family cover the funeral expenses and has garnered nearly $150,000 in donations.
