Maine State Police are investigating the deaths of a Mount Desert woman and her two grandchildren Sunday, after their vehicle was found submerged in Pond Cove in Roque Bluffs.
Sharon Bukulmez, 61, of Mount Desert, was last seen at approximately 8:30 p.m. Saturday, as she was leaving a family function in Jonesboro with her granddaughter Kinsley Grubb, 5, and grandson, Sawyer Grubb, 3, both of Bar Harbor.
The three were traveling to Machias but did not arrive as expected. After concerns were raised about their whereabouts, police began searching for Bukulmez and the children, according to Maine Department of Public Safety spokesperson Shannon Moss.
Bar Harbor Police Department retrieved location information from Bukulmez’s cellphone, which pointed to a location in the water near the boat ramp at the end of Schoppee Point Road in Roque Bluffs.
State police troopers and members of the Maine State Police Dive Team and Maine Marine Patrol were called to the scene.
They found the vehicle submerged in Pond Cove at approximately 7 a.m.
The bodies of Bukulmez and her two grandchildren, along with the vehicle, were then recovered from the water.
The Washington County Sheriff’s Office and the Coast Guard also assisted on scene. The bodies were transported to the Office of Chief Medical Examiner in Augusta, where autopsies will be performed to determine the cause and manner of death. The circumstances surrounding the incident remain under investigation. No additional information is being released at this time, Moss said.
This is the second time in the past 13 years that people in a car have drowned at that ramp after driving into the water at night.
In July 2013, two women — one of them five months pregnant — drowned after the car they were traveling in went off a boat ramp and into the ocean in a shroud of fog, police said at the time.