HAVERHILL — Leah “Lee” Pearse, a 2020 Haverhill High School graduate, died in an accident in the early hours of Jan. 6 while vacationing in Cancun, Mexico.
According to her obituary posted by the Driscoll Funeral Home in Bradford, Pearse, 20, was having a great beach day followed by dinner and dancing, after which she attempted to enter her Airbnb through the third-floor balcony because the keys had been locked inside. She slipped, fell, and died instantly, according to her family.
Pearse’s mother, Amy Goldfarb of Somerville, said her daughter was on a weeklong romantic get-away with her boyfriend, Augustin “Bobby” Aufderheide, 21, of Prince Frederick, Maryland.
She said the two returned to the multi-unit apartment building around 2 a.m. and were in the lobby when they thought they had misplaced the keys to their Airbnb apartment.
“Leah walked away telling Bobby she was going to look for the keys,” Goldfarb said. “It’s totally Leah’s character to be the heroic problem solver.”
Goldfarb said Aufderheide, who’d presented Pearse with the trip to Mexico as a birthday present, later told his mother that while waiting for Pearse in the lobby, his phone ran out of power and he could not reach her.
“It was no surprise to me to hear that Leah wandered off without telling Bobby and decided on her own that she could get into their apartment through the balcony,” Goldfarb said.
Multiple media outlets, both in Mexico and the United States, reported Aufderheide was detained by police following Pearse’s death, but he was released without charges days later when her death was ruled accidental.
Pearse was born at Anna Jaques Hospital in Newburyport, while her family was living in Bradford. She attended the Greenleaf School, Bradford Elementary, and the Hunking Middle School, Goldfarb said.
Following in the footsteps of her older sister, Anna Pearse, 25, she graduated from the Classical Academy at Haverhill High School in 2020, where she was involved in student council, MC-ing coffeehouses, playing on the JV lacrosse team, and serving as a co-captain of the girls swim team, her obituary noted.
“Leah was unique and one of a kind, which is what everyone who knew would say about her,” Goldfarb said.
When Leah Pearse turned 18, she began working at Mass General Hospital as a certified nursing assistant and giving her patients the utmost care, love, and comfort in their greatest time of need, her obituary said. Alongside her career as a CNA, she was studying at Simmons College and pursuing her five-year master’s in nursing.
“She left her job at Mass General two months ago to focus on her studies and while in school she worked her heart out and was receiving straight A’s,” Goldfarb said.
“Leah and Bobby had been dating for a year and a half and were very much in love,” she said. “Leah secretly told me she wanted to marry him.”
According to the obituary written by Anna Pearse, her sister was having a phenomenal time in college, making connections with everybody she met.
“People felt they knew her after just the first interaction, and often they loved her immediately for the ease her presence brought to every room she entered,” Anna wrote in her sister’s obituary. “Her confidence, compassion, and amazing sense of humor had a magnetic effect and she tended to bring out the best in the people around her.”
Amy Goldfarb said her daughter was a firecracker as a child: spunky, stubborn. Sometimes adults didn’t know how to handle such an intense, bold, and self-assured person, she said.
“Many of her friends at Simmons, when sending condolences to us, said Leah changed their lives with her love and attention,” Reggie Pearse, Leah’s father, said. “It’s been very comforting to us to hear that.”