A Washington couple who drowned while celebrating their babymoon in Hawaii held a gender reveal party before their trip to celebrate their upcoming baby girl.
Ilya ‘Billy’ and Sophia Tsaruk, of Snohomish drowned on Saturday while snorkeling in unguarded water off the coast of the Ahihi-Kinau Natural Area Reserve in Maui with her brother and his wife, Tony and Tiasiya.
Sophia, 26, was 30 weeks pregnant with their baby girl and the couple shared an 18-month-old toddler named Logan, who is currently staying with family.
Before their trip to the Hawaiian island, they held a gender reveal party, where the would-be parents-of-two looked overjoyed to learn they were having a girl, a video shared with Fox 13 Seattle shows.
The couple, both dressed in black, excitedly huddled near a tree as they prepared to get the news.
“Ready?” Sophia asked her husband, who she’d been married to for four years. “Set…go!”
In unison, they sprayed pink smoke into the air, with Sophia letting out an animated squeal of surprise and satisfaction as the pair embraced.
Ilya ‘Billy’ and Sophia Tsaruk, of Snohomish, Washington drowned on Saturday while snorkeling in unguarded water off the coast of the Ahihi-Kinau Natural Area Reserve in Maui with her brother and his wife
Right before their trip to the Hawaiian island, they held a gender reveal party, where the would-be parents-of-two looked overjoyed to learn they were having a girl
‘Oh my god!’ Sophia said in disbelief before her husband picked her up and swung her around while kissing her.
‘How excited are you?’ Ilya, 25, asked.
‘We’re having a girl! Oh my god, I can’t believe it,’ Sophia said with her hand over her mouth.
The couple planned on naming their daughter Melody, Tiasiya revealed.
‘They were prepping the room, the baby room for her,’ she told KITV. ‘They were so excited for life and what it was going to bring for them.’
‘She was going to be a girl mom,’ she told Fox 13 Seattle.
Ilya and Sophia had just bought a new home and were traveling to the Hawaiian island to celebrate Sophia’s pregnancy, alongside her brother, his wife, and another couple.
Sophia, who was not a strong swimmer, had mentioned feeling slightly ill that fateful day.
The group split up to explore the sea-bed before another swimmer approached Tiasiya and told her he had heard screaming in the water.
The Maui Fire Department was called to the area after it received reports that the couple was ‘in distress,’ according to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.
When rescuers arrived at the scene, they found Sophia unresponsive and pulled her from the water approximately 100 to 150 yards offshore.
Ilya was later found on the ocean floor and brought back to shore.
CPR was administered to both victims, but rescue crews’ efforts were unsuccessful and they were pronounced dead.
Taisiya believes the snorkel masks the couple were wearing may have played a part in their deaths.
‘When we were in the water, I experienced a loss of breath like I could not breath,’ she told KITV. ‘I felt like the mask was just suffocating me and I had to rip my mask off to breathe.
‘They both drowned, but she did have her mask on, which is, I don’t know,’ she continued. ‘I do believe that it played a role. Because, like I said, I experienced a loss of breath in the mask and we were wearing the same masks.’
Sophia, 26, was 30 weeks pregnant with their baby girl and the couple shared an 18-month-old toddler named Logan, who is currently staying with family
Logan has been left with nothing but photographs of his young parents
Social media in Hawaii has lit up with comments from dismayed locals warning of the dangers snorkel masks pose to inexperienced users when exhaled air is not properly expelled.
However, Tony does not believe the mask took his sister’s life.
‘It might’ve just played a role in scaring her to panic. Everything is just speculation at this point,’ he said.
The fire department said the surf conditions were relatively calm that day and the area is not known for riptides.
The area the couple was swimming in is unguarded, with the nearest lifeguard station located in Makena State Beach Park, according to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.
The tragedy remains under investigation.
DailyMail.com has reached out to the Maui Fire Department for comment.
The group was snorkeling in the unguarded waters off the Ahihi-Kinua Nature Reserve (pictured) on the west of Maui
First responders desperately tried to resuscitate the young parents after they were pulled from the water
In a tribute to the couple on a GoFundMe page written by the fundraiser’s organizer, Andrey Tupikov said the couple were active in the Sulamita Slavic Church and that ‘Sophia had the voice of an angel, and together with Ilya, they sang in a worship group in their church.’
‘The Kovalevich and Tsaruk families are grieving today, and this pain will not pass soon, but we continue to pray and lean on the Lord,’ Tupikov wrote.
‘We are blessed to have had both of them in our lives and are left now with the sweet memories and moments that we shared together with them.’
The money will go toward funeral expenses, as well as bringing the couple’s bodies back to Washington, according to Tupikov. The leftover money will go toward Logan’s future.
A little boy has been left with nothing but photographs of his young parents, but his remaining family has kept him company.
‘There’s just not a moment he’s alone,’ said Sophia’s older sister, Ilona Tsymbalyuk.
‘Everybody’s constantly rotating wanting to hold him because they left a little bit of him and her in him.’
Ilya’s brother, Tony, and his wife, Taisiya, had joined the couple for the trip to Maui
‘Her birthday is the day after Christmas,’ the sister added. ‘She was always talking about how she might deliver this baby girl that she was dreaming about on her birthday.’
A celebration of life will be held for the couple next Thursday, and their funerals will follow a day after.
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