BURIEN, Wash. — Friends are reeling after the body of a Burien man was pulled from Puget Sound by the U.S. Coast Guard overnight.
The man's boat capsized just before 3 a.m. Sunday near Burien’s Three Tree Point.
His friends say he was 27-year-old Tyler Ingraham. He died but his female companion was rescued. She went to Harborview Medical Center in critical condition.
The Coast Guardsmen who rescued her say it is a miracle she is still alive. They say Puget Sound was about 47 degrees when they found her. And she wasn't breathing.
"It's so shocking to all of us," said Collin Kallid. "And it's just such a horrible situation."
The friends of Ingraham are struggling to come to terms with what happened when the boat he and his girlfriend were in capsized.
"It's just a lot to take in," said Kallid. "This was just not the way that I at all expected to wake up this morning."
"It was just tough for us," said Marcus Green, a childhood friend. " Because you know, we grew up with each other. Because we really ate off the same plate. Everything, like, we did everything together."
The U. S. Coast Guard got the distress call just before 3 a.m.
"Headed out towards Three Tree point," said Bosun Mate 1 Travis Curley, "which is where the last known position the boat was."
BM1 Curley and his crew raced out to Puget Sound. A Coast Guard helicopter was sent, too. It took 25 minutes for Curley and his crew to reach the stranded couple.
"The helicopter ended up spotting them" said BM2 Jordan Kuehl. "And kind of directed us towards their location."
They found the woman.
"So was her face in the water?" Seaman Errol Funk was asked.
"At times, yes," he said.
"And did she say anything?" he was asked.
"She did not," said Funk. "She was unresponsive."
They performed CPR for 30 minutes as they headed back to shore. The guardsmen say the water was rough, producing four feet waves.
Curley was asked if they would have gone out in the 15-foot boat like what the couple was in.
"Absolutely not," said Curley.
"Why not?" he was asked.
"Just the size of the boat," he said, "and not having propulsion."
He says they weren't wearing life jackets.
A short time after Tyler was found, he was pronounced dead.
As for their boat -- only the bow was visible by the time the Coast Guard arrived.
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