A 20-year-old college student from Massachusetts has died after falling from an Airbnb balcony in Cancun, Mexico.
Leah “Lee” Pearse, a nursing student at Simmons University in Boston, locked herself out of her vacation rental on Jan. 6 and fell while trying to get back inside, according to his obituary.
Pearse climbed onto the third-story balcony when she slipped, fell, and “died instantly,” the obituary states.
Pearse’s boyfriend, Augustine Robert Aufderheide, 21, of Prince Frederick, Maryland, was first arrested by Mexican authorities after telling police he and Pearse had an argument before his fall, according to Southern Maryland News Network.
Aufderheide was later released after Pearse’s death was ruled an accident, according to reports.
Pearse, from Newbury, Massachusetts, began working as a certified practical nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital while pursuing her five-year master’s degree in nursing when she was 18.
“For the past two years, she’s been the happiest we’ve ever seen, living her independent college life in Boston, hanging out with her fabulous group of friends from Simmons, and falling deeply in love with her amazing and always in love boyfriend Bobby. (aka Gus or Augustine),” his obituary said.
Her heartbroken father, Reggie Pearse, told NBC 10 he remembered the last time he spoke to his daughter.
“I just said to her, ‘Be careful,’ and she said, ‘I’m going to try, Dad,'” he said. “She was extremely unpredictable, extremely eccentric, extremely funny,” her sister Anna Pearse said. to the media.
Anna said her sister’s last hours were happily spent with her boyfriend.
“All day they sang ‘C’est Amore,'” Anna Pearse said. “She was so in love with him.”
Pearse graduated from Classical Academy at Haverhill High School in 2020 before embarking on her nursing career at Simmons.
“The Simmons University family is heartbroken over the loss of junior Leah Pearse, an active and beloved member of our community,” university president Lynn Perry Wooten told NBC 10 in a statement. “Known for her confidence, compassion and sense of humor, Leah brought out the best in others.”
Massachusetts General Hospital remembered Pearse as a “dynamic” member of the hospital’s transplant unit.
“His positive energy, creativity and thoughtfulness won the hearts of patients and staff at the MGH,” the hospital said in a statement to Boston.com. “Our community will come together in the coming days to honor Leah’s memory.”
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