Njoroge: ‘Broke My Heart, My World Went Silent’
Paul Njoroge has spoken about his deep pain and grief over losing his family in the Ethiopian Airlines crash, telling the CBC that it broke his heart and his world went silent.
In a tragedy of indescribable proportions, the Ethiopian Airlines jet crashed shortly after take-off from Addis Ababa, killing all 157 people on board.
Mr Njoroge, who works at Butterfield Wealth Management, lost his his wife Caroline Karanja, 7-year-old son Ryan Njoroge Njuguna, 4-year-old daughter Kerry Paul Wanjiku Njuguna, 7-month-old daughter Rubi Wangui Njuguna, and his mother-in-law Ann Wangui Karanja.
The story said, “Paul Njoroge gently tucked five long-stemmed white roses in a mound of flowers near the crash site, one for each of his family lost in the Ethiopian Airlines crash last Sunday.
“Everyone’s telling me to be strong,” he said, speaking at the crash site. “I can’t be. How can I be strong? How can I even live on? My family is my life.”
“When I woke up Sunday, the first thing I saw was a Bloomberg alert that Flight 302 had crashed. I knew that was the flight I had booked. It broke my heart. I lost all my strength. My world went silent.”
“Paul Njoroge’s family had Kenyan passports. His wife and children were living in Canada, applying for permanent residency while Paul finished up his work in Bermuda. His baby daughter, Rubi, was born in Canada and therefore listed as one of the 18 lost. She was the youngest casualty.
“When I think of that plane coming down…” he trails off, remembering his wife of 14 years, “What she thought about? She must have thought about me, and how I’m going to live, and the kids, you know. They must have called their mommy, they must have cried out to their daddy, so it breaks my heart. It will never leave me.”
“Njoroge’s wife was an accountant, part of a growing generation of educated, outward-looking young people in Kenya. She grew up in rural Kenya, her parents scraping together enough funds to send her to university in Nairobi where Caroline met Paul. He was 19, she was 20.”
“We’ve walked a long way,” Mr Njoroge said, reflecting on their life together. ”We had so many plans.”
You can read the full story here on CBC.
Read More About
Category: Accidents and fires, All, News
