(CNN) A father of six has died after a wave struck him on a North Carolina beach and slammed him to the sand, breaking his neck, his wife said on Twitter.

Lee Dingle, 37, was playing on Oak Island's beach with three of his kids Thursday when the wave knocked him to the ground, Shannon Dingle said. The force of the impact broke his neck and made his throat swell so much that his brain was deprived of oxygen for too long to recover, she said.

He died a day later despite the efforts of some heroes, including their kids, to try to save him, she said.

"My partner, my love, and my home died today after a freak accident," Shannon Hope Dingle said Friday

"We met when I was 18 and he was 19, and we've been together ever since. I wasn't supposed to be saying goodbye at 37. I don't know how to be a grown up without him, but I'll learn. I just wish I didn't have to," she said.

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