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Hawaii Prep graduate, girlfriend among confirmed deaths in collapse of Florida condo

COURTESY CHABAD JEWISH CENTER OF PUERTO RICO
                                Ilan Naibryf and his girlfriend Deborah Berezdivin
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COURTESY CHABAD JEWISH CENTER OF PUERTO RICO

Ilan Naibryf and his girlfriend Deborah Berezdivin

A 21-year-old Hawaii Preparatory Academy High School graduate is confirmed to be among those who died during the collapse of the condo building that collapsed in Florida late last month.

Ilan Naibryf, a fourth-year student at University of Chicago, died as a result of the collapse of the Champlain Towers South in Surfside, Fla., on June 24, the university said in a news release.

The school’s Chabad Jewish Center, of which Naibryf was the president, said in an Instagram post that his body and the body of his girlfriend, Deborah Berezdivin, were found in the collapse. The Chabad Jewish Center of Puerto Rico in an Instagram post confirmed Berezdivin’s death. Both had been in the building when it fell.

Naibryf’s sister, Micaela, who started a fundraiser that has so far raised nearly $58,000 to prepare their family for “whatever the outcome is,” said Naibryf was born in Argentina and had graduated from Hawaii Preparatory Academy in Waimea on the Big Island. She added that he learned to surf and played on the school’s soccer, cross country and track and field teams and that “His heart always remained in Hawaii!”

He had continued those sports, at least for recreation, at the University of Chicago, where he was a physics major with a minor in molecular engineering and active in the community. The university said he was the second person in his family to attend the school.

The death toll of the condo’s collapse has climbed to nearly 80, with about 60 people still unaccounted for.

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