The woman who drowned in Lake Washington on Sunday was a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who loved Seattle and was looking for work here, relatives said.
Kelsey Brigance, who died after being pulled from Lake Washington on Sunday, was a mechanical engineer who graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) before moving to Seattle a short time ago.
The 25-year-old was staying with friends in Seattle while she looked for work, according to her father, Mark Brigance, of Poteau, Okla.
On Sunday, Brigance was on a 21-foot catamaran with two friends when choppy waves and high winds caused the boat to capsize, Seattle police said. The police department’s Harbor Patrol had already rescued one person from the water earlier the same day, police said.
When Brigance’s two friends were rescued from the water, they told officers that they believed she had been caught in a line and was trapped under the vessel. Police said that all three of the boat’s occupants had been wearing life jackets.
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Police were told by the woman’s friends she had been under the water for about six minutes.
Once Brigance was pulled from the water, CPR was performed on her by officers and then medics until she arrived at the University of Washington Medical Center.
A hospital spokeswoman said she died shortly after her arrival. The King County Medical Examiner’s Office listed her cause of death as drowning.
Brigance’s father said his daughter had been an extraordinarily curious and brilliant person since he could remember. “She was really special from the beginning,” he said Wednesday.
Before moving to Seattle, she had worked as a mechanical engineer at Compass Automation in Elgin, Ill.
The family is planning a private memorial service.