Medical examiner: Cousins died in accidental drowning

Chaska pond search
Dive team and other search and rescue personnel gather alongside a pond in Chaska, Minn., on Sunday night, Oct. 14, 2018, as part of the search for two missing women.
James Bryan for MPR News

A medical examiner says two missing teenage cousins whose bodies were pulled from a pond in Chaska died of accidental drowning.

The Midwest Medical Examiner's Office on Monday identified the victims as Bushra Abdi and Zeynab Abdalla, both 19.

Family members and friends held a vigil late Sunday near the pond where divers found the women's car. Authorities began searching after tire tracks were found leading from Highway 41 to the pond.

After several hours of searching the pond, officials used a loudspeaker to tell the crowd of several hundred people, many of them from the Somali-American community, that one body had been found in the submerged car. Soon after, they announced that a second body had been found in the water nearby.

No foul play is suspected.

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