Elderly woman found dead in submerged vehicle

An unidentified woman was found dead in a vehicle that was fully submerged in water at the boat launch in Blaine Harbor.

At about 7:20 a.m. on September 29, the Blaine Police Department responded to a call from a boater who had launched their boat from the public boat launch on Milhollin Drive in Blaine. The boater had noticed that a vehicle was fully submerged in water underneath their boat, and called the police immediately.

An officer responded to the scene and paged a diver from Whatcom County Search and Rescue. The diver arrived on scene, put on his scuba gear and went into the water. The vehicle was four or five feet below the surface of the water, and the diver observed an occupant inside the vehicle who was deceased.

Numerous firefighters and paramedics also arrived at the scene and were prepared to perform life-saving measures. However, it was determined that the safest course of action was for the diver to attach a cable to the submerged vehicle from a tow truck, which then removed the vehicle and its occupant from the water.

Once the vehicle was out of the water, paramedics pronounced its elderly female occupant deceased at the scene. On the afternoon of September 30, the investigation was still active, and an autopsy was scheduled to be conducted on Tuesday, October 1 by the Whatcom County Medical Examiner.

Blaine police sergeant Brent Greene declined to release the name or age of the victim. “We have notified some of the next of kin but we are not positive that all of them have been notified yet,” he said.