A private boat crashed into a Logan Airport pier in East Boston shortly after 11 p.m. on Wednesday, throwing four people onto a rocky shoreline and sending Elizabeth Dankert, 24, of Andover, to Massachusetts General Hospital, where she was pronounced dead early Thursday.
Dankert had boarded the small boat in the Seaport on Wednesday evening with two friends, both 23, and was riding in a vessel operated by a 40-year-old man when it struck the Runway 4R pier off Perimeter Road. One person on board was able to make a 911 call from a phone after the crash.
The injury toll was not immediately fatal for the others. All four patients were taken by ambulance to Massachusetts General Hospital and were being treated for injuries that are not life-threatening, according to emergency officials. Boston Emergency Medical Services said EMTs George May and Andrea Albano reached the scene in difficult conditions, with darkness and slippery shoreline rocks slowing the response, and began patient care before Massport Fire crews carefully extricated the four patients from the rocks.
Gordon said the vessel was taken from its Seaport location without authorization and operated outside the knowledge and control of the club after it had closed for the night. He said it was accessed without the club’s knowledge by someone able to get into the marina, and that it was not someone who made a reservation. The company said it is cooperating with investigators.
The boat was a Key West brand center console recreational fishing boat with two Yamaha motors, and it was heavily damaged in the crash. The impact shut down a runway at Logan Airport overnight, adding an aviation disruption to a collision that has already become a criminal and transportation investigation.
Dankert played soccer at Union College in New York and graduated in 2024. Suffolk District Attorney Kevin Hayden said all aspects of the tragedy are under investigation and offered condolences to her family and friends, while also thanking EMS personnel and other first responders for their work under extremely difficult conditions.
The wreck now leaves investigators with two central questions: how the boat was taken from the Seaport marina and how a night that began as a ride among friends ended with one young woman dead and a runway closed at one of the region’s busiest airports. The district attorney’s office says it is looking at every part of it.
