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3 generations, all named Emma, die in France crash. Twelve-year-old Emma Solera Pardo, her mother Emma Pardo Vidal and grandmother Emma Vidal Bardan, all boarded the plane bound for Düsseldorf last Tuesday. They planned to catch a connecting flight to Manchester to spend a few days with the youngest Emma’s teenage brother, who is studying English.
Instead, all were killed when co-pilot Andreas Lubitz steered Flight 9525 into a mountainside in the French Alps killing all 150 people on board. Today it emerged that Lubitz had once received treatment for suicidal tendencies.
Ralf Herrenbrueck, a spokesman for Düsseldorf prosecutors, said Lubitz had received psychotherapy treatment “with a note about suicidal tendencies” for a number of years before becoming a pilot. But after qualifying, Lubitz had not received similar treatment.
“There is no evidence to show that the co-pilot was about to do what he appears to have done,” Mr Herrenbrueck said, adding that there was nothing so far in Lubitz’s “personal and professional life that can enable us to say anything about his motive”.
Juan Pardo Yanez, Emma Vidal Bardan’s widower, had earlier joined other relatives in Seyne-Les-Alpes, near the scene of the crash, where investigators are collecting evidence. Lubitz’s remains are reported to be among those already recovered. A leading forensic expert, Michael Tsokos, said he hoped that within three weeks up to 95 per cent of the victims will have been identified and officially declared dead.
Back in Sant Cugat del Vallès, a village near Barcelona, Mr Pardo Yanez told the Associated Press: “There is nothing that can be done or could be said to me to change the loss of these three so dearly loved ones. I will return with all my children to the site where all of them have died.”
He was attending a Mass in the village for the family. The youngest Emma, a pupil at the local Catholic school, was said to have been popular with staff and her classmates. The principal could only manage one word when asked by the AP how people at the school felt. “Destroyed,” she said.
Fifty Spanish people, mostly Catalans, were killed in the disaster.
Agencies/Canadajournal
