Two 20-year-old Illinois kayakers are dead after a Lake Michigan outing near Washington Island ended in a weekend search and recovery operation. David Thalman of Dundee and Franceska Warick of South Elgin were found Monday after authorities said they went kayaking Saturday and did not return.
Washington Island police received a report around 6:48 p.m. Saturday that two people had gone kayaking and had not returned. The pair were not wearing life jackets, according to police details cited in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel report.
Search crews worked through the weekend with water searches, ground teams and drones, while regional fire, police and other agencies joined the response. The Door County Sheriff's Office took command Sunday, and the mission shifted from a search to a recovery operation.
Crews located one body at 10:55 a.m. Monday and recovered the second later that day, according to the Journal Sentinel's account. The Door County Sheriff's Office is investigating, but authorities have not publicly released a cause of death or described what led to the kayakers' deaths.
What Investigators Still Have Not Said
The sequence leaves important questions unanswered, including when the kayak overturned or how long the two were in the water. There was no immediate public indication that investigators had reached a conclusion about weather, equipment failure or any other contributing factor.
A Grim 2026 Wisconsin Boating Backdrop
The tragedy also lands in a year when Wisconsin's boating fatality list is already crowded. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources lists 17 fatal boating incidents through July 12, including two involving kayaks; both entries say the victims were not wearing life jackets.
The DNR's current list ends before the Washington Island deaths and does not yet reflect this incident. For now, investigators in Door County are still working to reconstruct what happened in the Lake Michigan waters north of the peninsula.
