Man drowns while proposing to his girlfriend underwater: 'This emptiness will never be filled'

Dillon Thompson
Updated ·2 min read

A man drowned while proposing to his girlfriend from outside their underwater hotel room on Thursday, according to a Facebook post by his girlfriend.

Steven Weber was on vacation in Tanzania with his girlfriend, Kenesha Antoine, when the tragic accident occurred. The couple was staying at the Manta Resort in the hotel's private, floating cabin, which features an underwater bedroom.

Antoine's Facebook post, which included a video and photos of the proposal gone wrong, showed Weber swimming outside the room with a ring and handwritten note, which he'd sealed inside a plastic bag.

"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 letter read.

Weber then flipped the note around, revealing the message, "Will you please be my wife. Marry me?" The video shows him swimming out of the frame shortly after.

It's unclear what exactly caused Weber to drown in the following minutes, but the hotel has confirmed that a male guest drowned while swimming outside of its underwater room Thursday.

Antoine didn't share any details about her boyfriend's death either, however, she did give her answer to his proposal.

"You never emerged from those depths, so you never got to hear my answer, 'Yes! Yes! A million times, yes, I will marry you!!' her post read.

Mandy Hoffman, Weber's sister, told NBC News that Antoine had to flag down boaters to get help pulling her boyfriend's body out of the water.

"They attempted CPR and at that point in time he did have a light pulse," Hoffman said. "However, they were not able to bring him back and that's what we know right now."

She added that authorities have said they'll perform an autopsy on Weber's body to hopefully confirm a cause of death. After that, he'll be returned to his home state of Louisiana, where he worked at an addiction wellness center, according to his Facebook page.

"This emptiness will never be filled," Mandy Hoffman told NBC News. "We love him. We want him back here in the United States. He's just a beautiful, beautiful wonderful person and I want everyone to know that."

Antoine called Weber her "perfect love," using her post to emphasize the memories they'd made in the days before their death. "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."