She had the whole world in front of her. A college degree. A career she was building. Friends who loved her. And then, just like that, it was all gone — sometime after 11 o’clock on a Wednesday night in Boston Harbor.
Elizabeth “Lizzie” Dankert was 24 years old, an Andover, Massachusetts girl who had recently graduated from Union College up in Schenectady, New York, where she played soccer and left a mark that her school says they’ll never forget. After college, she came back to the Boston area and landed a job in sales at PTC, a software company right there in the Seaport district. By all accounts, she was sharp, warm, and the kind of person who made every room better just by walking into it.
Wednesday night, May 13, started out like any other evening in the Seaport. Lizzie and two of her friends, both 23, crossed paths with a 40-year-old man and ended up on a small twin-engine boat with him. Nobody could’ve guessed what was coming next. Around 11:20 p.m., that boat went barreling straight into Pier 4R — a pier that stretches out into Boston Harbor near a Logan International Airport runway — and sent all four people flying onto a rocky shoreline in the dark.
EMTs George May and Andrea Albano from Boston Emergency Medical Services got out there fast, working the slippery rocks in pitch-black conditions alongside Massport Fire crews to pull the victims out one by one. Lizzie was in the worst shape. First responders were doing CPR on her at the scene. She was rushed by ambulance to Massachusetts General Hospital, but early Thursday morning, she was gone. The three others — her two friends and the man who was operating the boat — survived with injuries that weren’t life-threatening.
Here’s where things get even more troubling. Freedom Boat Club, which owns the vessel, came out and said flat-out that the boat had been taken without authorization. The club’s dock in the Seaport was already closed for the night. A spokesperson for Brunswick Corporation, which owns Freedom Boat Club, confirmed that the boat was operated “outside the knowledge and control of the Club.” In plain English, nobody had permission to be on that water. And now a 24-year-old woman is dead.
No charges have been filed as of now, and investigators still haven’t named the 40-year-old man who was at the controls. Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden said his office is looking into every aspect of the crash. The runway the pier supports was temporarily shut down during the response, though Massport confirmed there was no lasting impact to airport operations.
Over at Union College, the grief hit hard. Spokesman Phillip Wajda didn’t mince words. He called Lizzie’s passing “a profound loss” for the entire campus community and said she was an exceptional student-athlete who left a lasting impact in her four years there. Her colleagues at PTC were just as devastated, calling her “a beloved member of the team” known for her positive attitude and willingness to help anybody who needed it. Her family told NBC10 Boston that Lizzie was an amazing young woman with a bright future ahead of her — and they’re absolutely right. The future just wasn’t fair to her.
