A U.S. student who was about to graduate has died after getting stuck underwater during a cave diving trip with friends.
Amy Ryan, 22, visited the springs off S.Riviera Point in Chassahowitzka, Florida with her boyfriend Steven Orosz and another couple.
Miss Ryan, who was two weeks from graduating, had been following her friends through the cave system but failed to come to the surface after them.
It is thought she took a wrong turn and became disoriented. Her distraught friends could not find her.
Emergency teams were quickly on the scene and a firefighter who was also a certified cave diver discovered the girl but by then she had been under water for 14 minutes.
A spokeswoman for the sheriff's office told 10 News in America that the group had not been wearing scuba gear, just goggles.
Jack Calbeck, who lives near the beauty spot, told the St Petersburg Times: 'I heard a voice scream out "My girlfriend just died." It was horrible.'
Tommy Fletcher, the cave diver who found her, said Miss Ryan was in exactlyt he same spot as a man who died in the system a few years ago.
'We began to survey the offshoots going up underneath the ground and were able to find her 25ft back up into those offshoots,' he said.
The underwater tunnel stretches about 15ft wide and connects two springs - one around 8ft around and 10ft deep and the other around 3ft across and up to 12ft deep.
It had initially been hoped Miss Ryan, from Palm Bay, could still have been alive but she was pronounced dead on arrival at Oak Hill Hospital in Hernando County.
Mr Fletcher said: 'Anytime you go into an overhead environment cave system where you have rock or ledges between you and the surface, it requires specialty training.'
Mr Orosz paid tribute to his girlfriend, who had just been accepted into medical school, describing her as strong-willed, smart and with a 'perfect smile'.
He said: 'She was a perfect, smart, beautiful person. [This] Shouldn't have happened this way.'
Miss Ryan had been expected to graduate summa cum laude in biology from the University of South Florida and was well known to dean of its Honors College Stuart Silverman.
He said: 'If I said to you that she's got sparkle, you'd know what I'd mean: the smile, enthusiasm. She'd be successful at anything she wanted to do.'
Kelli Vaughn, one of Miss Ryan's roommates, said her friend had watched as others swam through the tunnel and then decided to do it herself.
'She was kind of hesitant at first, but her being her adventurous self, she wasn't going to let anybody talk her down,' she said.
'Steven went first, that's what I'm hearing from him. He went in first and she followed because she wanted to follow and he kept checking on her and she was fine and he finally made it up and notice that she wasn't there.'
She added that Mr Orosz was 'devastated'. 'He would do anything for her and he tried so hard to go get her. He's just heartbroken.'
Ryan, from Palm Bay, was a biology major at USF and was about to graduate in two weeks with honors. She was recently accepted into the Lake Erie College of Ostepathic Medicine.
In a written statement, Miss Vaughn added: 'My roommate Amy was someone I could trust with my life and confide in always. Everyone knew her as the girl who always smiled.
'Her time on earth was cut short, but it was a life her parents and she herself should be extremely proud of.'
source: dailymail.co.uk
Diving Claims
