A rising chef at a Michelin-star restaurant died in a freak accident when she was struck by a boulder on a dream hike in Hawaii with her boyfriend, her grief-stricken family has revealed.
Gianna Buzzetta, 26, was hit by the falling debris on March 23 as she was checking out the Makaleha Falls waterfall in Kauai with boyfriend Connor Quinton, who was described as her “soon-to-be” fianće.
“They heard a really loud noise. [Quinton] looked up, but couldn’t figure out where the noise was coming from. Within a second, it happened,” her dad, Sal Buzzetta, told 10News.
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“The rock dislodged from quite a ways up … then it landed on her.”
Her boyfriend managed to pull her to safety but had to run to get help because he couldn’t get cellphone service, the family said.
Buzzetta was airlifted to a hospital where she later died the following day. Her parents managed to make it to the hospital before she passed.
The couple had gone to the waterfall because it was Buzzetta’s life-long dream, according to her family.
“She had told her boyfriend, Connor, that day, he had fulfilled her dreams and it was the best day of her life,” said her mom, Caty.
Buzzetta was a “precious daughter, sister, aunt, niece, cousin, grand-daughter, girlfriend/soon-to-be fianće, friend, Christian, and gifted executive pastry chef,” according to an online fundraiser, which did not say if her boyfriend had planned to propose on the trip.
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Buzzetta worked as an executive pastry chef at Jeune et Jolie restaurant in Carlsbad where she’d helped them win Michelin stars for three years running.
“She was a huge part of the team. Super creative, super talented, incredibly hardworking,” her boss, John Resnick, told Fox5 San Diego.
“Humble, confident — I mean all these things that we want to see in the people we work with. So from that professional talent standpoint, she was incredible… Our whole team loved working alongside her.”
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