The cold, black rain was still pouring down yesterday as a University of Kentucky police officer manned the flooded intersection of Nicholasville Road and Alumni Drive to make sure vehicles didn't try to cross.

A taxi carrying two women passengers approached Officer T.J. Doyle. He directed the driver to turn the cab around, watching closely to make sure it didn't get trapped.

One woman, shoes in hand, waded through the water, but the current was too strong. She hollered that she couldn't make it. Her friend went to get her.

The Fayette County coroner's office said the bodies of Lauren Brooke Fannin, 25, and Lindsey Marie Harp, 25, were found less than a half a mile from where the taxi left them.

When the two women began screaming, a woman who had been standing on the porch of a nearby home jumped into the rising water, but she became submerged and Doyle pulled her to safety.

Doyle searched the water and a nearby drainage ditch alone until a second officer, Laura Marco, arrived. Then, Doyle held Marco by her legs so she could reach farther into the water and better search the drainage ditch. A third officer, Steve Campbell, also arrived and began searching.

Still, the officers and neighbors continued searching frantically until a senior UK officer, Lt. Tiua Chilton, determined that the rising waters around the drainage ditch were too strong and that the searchers were in danger of drowning.

Both Fannin and Harp received their undergraduate degrees from Georgetown College. Fannin majored in biology and minored in chemistry. She also was a member of Kappa Delta sorority at Georgetown.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with the loved ones of Lauren and Lindsey," UK President Lee Todd said yesterday. "We want them to know that their extended family at the University of Kentucky, and I'm sure at Georgetown College as well, is grieving with them during this time."

Reached at their homes yesterday, families of both women said they were too saddened to talk about the tragedy. But they described the two as loving women with bright futures ahead of them.

Former Martin County school board member William Davis said Fannin attended Sheldon Clark High School with his son, Brian. Davis hired Fannin while she was still in high school to help at his insurance office after school.

Davis said when Fannin started her first year of pharmacy school at UK, she was seriously injured in an auto accident and was forced to stop attending classes for a year. But she persevered through the difficult times.

He called Fannin's mother, Susan Fannin, "a pillar in our church," who, among other things, organized the Inez First Baptist Church's vacation Bible school.

Fannin's father, Lynn Gary Fannin, is disabled, he said, and the son of a retired Martin County teacher. Davis said all of the Fannins' five children had been excellent students, including the youngest, Elizabeth, a high school senior and Governor's Scholar.

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