Police have identified the two people killed Wednesday in a fire that ripped through a home near Dupont Circle.
Michael Patrick McLoughlin, 24, and Nina May Brekelmans, 25, died after the fire in the 1600 block of Riggs Place NW, D.C. police said.
Brekelmans had recently graduated from Georgetown University with a Masters degree in Arabic studies, her family said. They described her as an avid runner and said she had been awarded a Fulbright scholarship to research female runners in Jordan.
McLoughlin earned degrees in finance and economics from the University of Maryland in 2012. He was a 2008 graduate of Leonardtown High School and loved sports, particularly soccer, his family said. They called him "a driven, intelligent young man, with an amazing ability to make people laugh" who was just beginning his career in D.C.
Three firefighters and two civilians suffered minor injuries in the blaze, which gutted the three-story house.
The cause of the fire is not yet known.
