Young Australian man tragically dies just four days into his ‘dream’ holiday to the United States

An Aus­tralian snif­fer dog train­er has trag­i­cal­ly died dur­ing a ‘dream’ hol­i­day with his part­ner in the Unit­ed States.

Pierre Mantz, 31, from Mel­bourne, died sud­den­ly on Octo­ber 15 while vis­it­ing Wash­ing­ton, D.C., with his part­ner of two years, Elcee Rob­bo.

Pho­tos post­ed online show the cou­ple mak­ing the most of their jour­ney before tragedy struck.

One pic­ture shows the pair pos­ing in front of the Lin­coln Memo­r­i­al Reflect­ing Pool, with the Wash­ing­ton Mon­u­ment ris­ing into the sky in the back­ground.

Anoth­er shows Mr. Mantz beam­ing with joy as he stood for a pho­to in front of the Wal­dorf Asto­ria, a his­toric post office turned lux­u­ry hotel near the White House.

His father Tony said he passed away only four days into ‘what was to be his dream trip of a life­time in the USA’.

‘Need­less to say my heart is com­plete­ly shat­tered,’ Mr. Mantz said.

Trib­utes have begun to pour in online for Mr. Mantz, who worked for Detec­tor Dogs Aus­tralia, which trains dogs with high­ly devel­oped sens­es of smell to help screen for items, typ­i­cal­ly illic­it sub­stances, across a range of envi­ron­ments.

The pro­gram said his ‘nat­ur­al tal­ent and ded­i­ca­tion’ made him an inte­gral part of the team.

‘He worked tire­less­ly for many years to help it thrive,’ his col­leagues said in a trib­ute on behalf of DDA.

‘His con­tri­bu­tion, pro­fes­sion­al­ism, and gen­uine care for both peo­ple and dogs will nev­er be for­got­ten.’

Fam­i­ly friends and fel­low train­ers Kris and Tonia Kot­sopou­los said they were ‘heart­bro­ken’ and filled with ‘incred­i­ble sad­ness’.

‘[He was] a dri­ven young man deter­mined to become the best he could be in his art of ani­mal train­ing,’ they said. 

The fam­i­ly are now work­ing to bring him home as they grap­ple with exor­bi­tant repa­tri­a­tion costs. 

Ms Rob­bo said the fam­i­ly is dis­traught and ‘just want to get him home’.

‘I can­not leave DC with­out him,’ she said. 

He is pic­tured pos­ing out­side of the Wal­dorf Asto­ria hotel while in Wash­ing­ton DC

Loved one Kay­ley Booth has set up a GoFundMe to help raise funds for trans­porta­tion, legal, and logis­ti­cal expens­es to bring Mr Mantz back to Aus­tralia.

She described Pierre as ‘a beloved son, broth­er, and friend—someone whose ener­getic spir­it touched every­one around him’.

‘The process of repa­tri­a­tion is cost­ly,’ she wrote on the fundrais­er page.

‘We kind­ly ask for your gen­eros­i­ty and com­pas­sion to help ease this bur­den on his fam­i­ly dur­ing their time of unimag­in­able sor­row.’

The fundrais­er has gar­nered more than $40,000 since it was launched on Sun­day.

The Dai­ly Mail has con­tact­ed DFAT for com­ment.