Missing teen presumed dead and 6 injured after boat runs aground in Austin

A teenager is missing and presumed dead and six others are injured after a boat ran aground in northwest Austin on Sunday night, authorities said.

The boat, which had 7 people on it, ran aground off Lake Austin just after 6:10 p.m. about 13 miles northwest of downtown Austin, according to tweets from the Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services.

By shortly after 7 p.m. local time, the search for the missing teen had transitioned from a rescue to recovery effort, a tweet from the agency said, adding that the event had been declared a “level-5 mass casualty incident,” referring to the number of victims and the scale of resources required to treat them.

The missing teenager is now being presumed dead, a spokesperson from the Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services confirmed.

Ken Campbell, assistant chief of the CE-Bar Fire Department, told NBC affiliate KXAN of Austin that the incident unfolded after a boat went over the wake of another boat, lost control and hit the bank of the lake, causing at least one person to be ejected from the vessel. It is unclear if the ejected person was the missing teen.

In addition to the missing teen, two passengers were transported to hospitals with serious injuries. Two others were transported with potentially serious injuries, and two refused transport to hospitals, according to the agency. Three of the injured patients were transported to a hospital just south of downtown, and one was taken by helicopter to another a few miles north, according to the agency.

Representatives for the hospitals could not immediately be reached Monday morning.

Several agencies — including Austin Police and "multiple fire departments" — responded to the incident, which the emergency medical services agency said occurred in a remote area that was difficult to access.

A spokesperson for Austin Emergency Medical Services said they were not planning to release more information about the victims.

In a separate incident, one adult died and five people sustained non-life threatening injuries following a collision between a boat and jet ski that occurred earlier Sunday afternoon on Lake Travis, a reservoir northwest of Lake Austin, according to information from the agency. The deceased victim was pronounced dead on the scene "after extensive resuscitative efforts."

More information on the victims in that incident was not available.