The search for a missing Princeton University junior came to a tragic end when the student’s body was discovered in a lake near the New Jersey campus. The student, 23-year-old Lauren Blackburn, was found in Lake Carnegie on a Friday morning, as confirmed by Princeton’s Department of Safety. The cause of Blackburn’s death remains undisclosed.
The news of Blackburn’s death was shared with the university community by Dean of Undergraduate Students, Regan Crotty. In a heartfelt letter to the school, Crotty expressed profound sadness and extended deepest condolences to Blackburn’s family and friends. Blackburn, an English major, was last seen near the university’s Firestone Library on the evening of April 19.
The university issued a campus alert on Tuesday, reporting Blackburn as missing. Blackburn’s phone was traced to the vicinity of the man-made reservoir around midnight, which initiated a water search. Lake Carnegie, located just south of the campus and near the university’s athletic complex, is about a mile from the library where Blackburn was last seen.
The lake, a generous gift from steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, cost $450,000 at the time, equivalent to approximately $9.5 million today. The reservoir spans 263 acres and has a consistent depth of nine feet, 35 feet from the shoreline.
Blackburn, a former features writer for the Daily Princetonian, the student newspaper, was the most recent recipient of the 2024 Sam Hutton Fund for the Arts. This award is given to one student in the Lewis Center for the Arts to support undergraduate summer study, travel, and independent research. Prior to attending Princeton, Blackburn graduated from Corydon Central High School in southern Indiana.
In 2019, Blackburn made local headlines as a high school senior when he was awarded a National Merit Scholarship and Gates Scholarship. His teachers remembered him as a kind student with an exceptional memory. Blackburn’s death is the sixth undergraduate death at the school since 2021, with the previous five being ruled as suicides.