OSHKOSH, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – Just days after a boat crash on Lake Winnebago, friends are sharing pictures and memories of Cassie and Lauren Laabs, the two women who lost their lives in the collision.
While the loss of her friend is hard to accept, Rachel Schreiner says she’s also hurting for Lauren and Cassie’s parents and one sister left behind.
“I can’t even imagine what she’s going through, not only losing her two sisters but her two best friends,” said Schreiner.
There were three Laabs sisters in all. Lauren, Jessie, and Cassie are all described as being a tight, bubbly family.
26-year-old Lauren and 20-year-old Cassie were thrown into the water after their 20-foot boat collided with a 26-foot boat around 8:30 Saturday night in the Town of Vinland.
“She just made you feel good about yourself,” Schreiner said of Cassie. “Lauren was her role model and that’s the person she looked up to the most and she wanted to be just like her and travel.”
Lauren spent the last two years traveling to Africa and helping people.
Cassie wanted to teach either kindergarten or first grade.
“My friends and I realize that she didn’t get the chance to teach them, but she did get the chance to teach us many things through our friendships about how wonderful life is.”
This year was supposed to be Cassie’s Junior year at the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee.
“We all live like streets away from each other,” said Schreiner.
That will make it hard to start the new semester in the coming weeks.
It still hasn’t sunk in for Schreiner that one of her best friends is gone.
“Earlier last year we went to the Milwaukee Art Museum and we were just like, in awe of how old things were.”
Today, she can’t help but Smile when she thinks of her intellectual friend.
“Cassie was just telling me ‘Rach, we should go here more often it’s so much fun. I didn’t know we had this in common’ because not many people think of the history that way.
Investigators with the Winnebago County Sheriff’s Office have not determined any cause of death yet.
