Family mourns death of Boswell High senior involved in kayak accident at Benbrook Lake
.jpeg "Luke Nickens, 18, entered the water while kayaking at Benbrook Lake. His body was recovered on March 19.")
The relatives and friends of Luke Nickens are mourning the death of the 18-year-old high school senior whose body was recovered Wednesday from Benbrook Lake after a kayak accident.
Nickens and two other people were aboard one kayak on Tuesday morning when an incident occurred that caused all three to enter the water, a Texas Parks and Wildlife Department spokesperson said. The other two people swam to shore. Nickens did not resurface.
His body was found about 2:45 p.m. on Wednesday.
The Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office determined Nickens’ death was an accident.
Asked by a reporter for a description of what caused Nickens and the others to go into the water, the parks and wildlife spokesperson said the case is open. The spokesperson declined to release the genders or ages of the other people in the kayak.
Nickens lived in Fort Worth and was a senior at Boswell High, in the Eagle Mountain-Saginaw school district. He was in the choir and on the tennis team, a family member said.
He planned to join the Air Force to train as a firefighter and hoped to be a civilian firefighter.
He was the owner of a late-1990s Corvette, which he saved to buy and worked on with his father.
The two-day search began when Texas game wardens and local police and firefighters responded about 10:45 a.m. on Tuesday to the report of a missing kayaker. Game wardens and the other agencies searched for Nickens using boats and divers and on Wednesday used advanced sonar technology.
A friend of the family started a GoFundMe account to support them after the loss of their oldest son.
This story was originally published March 20, 2025 at 1:16 PM.
