iStock(NEW YORK) — The family of a Louisiana man who drowned while proposing to his girlfriend in Tanzania last week created a GoFundMe campaign to help pay for his burial expenses.
Baton Rouge resident Steven Weber Jr., 40, was vacationing on Pemba Island with his girlfriend, Kenesha Antoine, when he dove underwater for the elaborate proposal, a video recorded by Antoine shows. At one point, Weber held up a note to a glass window that read in part, “I can’t hold my breath long enough to tell you everything I love about you.”
The back of the note said, “Will you please be my wife. Marry me???”
Weber pulled a ring out of his pocket and then appeared to swim up to meet Antoine, she wrote in an emotional post on Facebook. It was during that swim that he died.
Weber’s sister, Mandy Hoffman, created the crowdfund to raise money to pay for his body to be returned to the U.S. and burial costs, she wrote on the GoFundMe campaign.
“He did not have insurance, and any assistance is greatly appreciated,” Hoffman wrote. “As you can imagine, this is beyond tragic, and the loss is unbearable for all who loved him.”
Weber was “with the love of his life” and “doing what he loved in life” when he died, according to the GoFundMe campaign, which had raised just over $8,000 by Monday morning.
Antoine wrote on Facebook Friday that her answer to Weber’s question was yes.
“You never emerged from those depths, so you never got to hear my answer, ‘Yes! Yes! A million times, yes, I will marry you!!'” she wrote.
The U.S. Department of State confirmed Weber’s death in a statement to ABC News last week. A statement released by Hoffman last week stated that the family did not yet have the autopsy results.
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