A Michigan man died early Saturday on the lakefront after he jumped into the water to retrieve his girlfriend's water bottle, officials said.

Michael Hilling, 19, of Rock, Mich., was pronounced dead at 1:36 a.m. at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, according to the Cook County medical examiner's office.

At 12:08 a.m., emergency personnel responded to a call of a person in the water at Congress Parkway, just east of Buckingham Fountain, said Chief Joe Roccasalva, a Fire Department spokesman.

Hilling was sitting with his girlfriend when her water bottle fell in the lake, said police spokesman John Mirabelli. Hilling jumped in to try and retrieve it but went underwater, Mirabelli said.

Emergency responders found a woman standing where the man had fallen in. Firefighters pulled the man's body out of the water.

Hilling was in town visiting his girlfriend, a student at Columbia College, officials said.

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.

Hilling met his girlfriend in his hometown of Rock, and they began dating after high school graduation. He lived with a friend in Perkins, Mich., and was working as a cook but recently talked about moving to Chicago to enroll at Columbia College with his girlfriend, his mother said.

"I was kind of thinking, 'I suppose there'll be grandkids here pretty quick,'" his mother said.

His Facebook profile says he was in a relationship, which began Dec. 31, 2009.

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