Nineteen-year-old Michael Hilling and his girlfriend were celebrating their first year together, watching the fireworks explode over Lake Michigan at midnight New Year's Eve near Buckingham Fountain in downtown Chicago.

Then his girlfriend, Jessica Woytonik, dropped her water bottle into the lake's frigid waters, and Hilling tried to retrieve it. A police report says he jumped in to the water and began struggling.

Hilling drowned early Saturday in the dark lake as the fireworks went off overhead. His body was recovered by a fire department scuba team after he was in the water for about 30 minutes, according to police.


"We were there to celebrate,'' Woytonik told the Chicago Sun Times by telephone from Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where Hilling was pronounced dead. "It was our anniversary at midnight.''

Hilling and Woytonik met as third-graders and the pair grew up together in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, but they started dating Dec. 31, 2009, she told the newspaper. He was visiting her in Chicago, where she is studying fine art at Columbia College.

Hilling's mother, Debra, said she could not understand what happened because her son couldn't swim.

"Who would care about a water bottle? ... I'm just, like, in damn disbelief," she said, according to the Chicago Tribune.


Media outlets quoting police indicated that Hilling had jumped into the lake to grab the water bottle. But a person who identified herself as Woytonik's mother posted a message on the NBC Chicago website disputing that account, saying he instead hung off the seawall trying to reach the bottle with his foot.

"He could not pull himself back up so Jessica tried to pull him up. He could no longer hold on and she was not strong enough to help him. He FELL in. ...He tried to make it to the ladder but the cold and probably panic took over," Kammie Burks wrote.

"Jessica watched her best friend drown in front of her as the fireworks went off," the poster said.

"Michael was like a son to us," she wrote. "This was a horrible accident that will live with Jessica and the families and friends of this wonderful young man forever."