Three generations, all named Emma, die in Germanwings crash

March 30, 2015 01:27 pm | Updated November 16, 2021 05:11 pm IST - SANT CUGAT DEL VALLES, Spain

A stele and flowers laid in memory of the victims are placed in the area where the Germanwings jetliner crashed in the French Alps, in Le Vernet, France.

A stele and flowers laid in memory of the victims are placed in the area where the Germanwings jetliner crashed in the French Alps, in Le Vernet, France.

From a lush suburban valley near bustling Barcelona, three generations of a well-heeled family set off last week for a fun trip to Manchester, England – 12-year-old Emma Solera Pardo, her mother Emma Pardo Vidal, and grandmother Emma Vidal Bardan.

They were on their way to pick up the youngest Emma’s teen brother as he finished a semester abroad to hone his English, do some sightseeing and then head home together.

But the Germanwings flight 9525 taking them to Duesseldorf for a connecting flight to Britain slammed into the French Alps. Prosecutors said co-pilot Andreas Lubitz locked the pilot out of the cockpit and aimed the aircraft down in an eight-minute descent until it hit the ground and disintegrated.

Juan Pardo Yanez little Emma’s grandfather, the father of her mother and the former husband of the eldest Emma was virtually speechless after returning from a trip for relatives of the 150 crash victims to the accident zone in Seyne-Les-Alpes, France, where investigators working in a ravine were collecting small pieces of the plane and body parts ahead of a painstaking identification effort.

“There is nothing that can be done or could be said to me to change the loss of these three so dearly loved ones,” Pardo Yanez told journalists outside a Barcelona crisis centre set up for victims’ relatives.

The youngest Emma’s father, Juan Ignacio Solera, is the founder and chief executive of iVOOX, a company that makes a popular software application for podcast downloads.

Emma’s death hit her classmates incredibly hard, said principal Maria Reina Montoro, who could only come up with one word to describe how they felt - “Destroyed.”

While somewhat quiet and timid, the youngest Emma was a dedicated tennis player, who regularly practiced at a club, said Manu Navas, director of the club’s tennis academy. Emma’s mother also played paddle tennis there.

Pardo Yanez didn’t say how he would try to help rebuild his life and family now that his ex-wife is gone along with one of his daughters and a granddaughter.

But he was sure of one thing - “I will return with all my children to the site where all of them have died.”

ANI adds:

Investigators have said that they have isolated DNA of 78 victims.

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