Woman loses relatives in 2 disasters
In an almost incomprehensible twist of fate, an Australian woman who lost her brother in the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 learned on Friday that her step daughter was on the plane shot down over Ukraine.
Kaylene Mann's brother Rod Burrows and sister-in-law Mary Burrows were on board Flight 370 when it vanished in March. On Friday, Mann found out that her stepdaughter, Maree Rizk, was killed along with 297 others on Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, which US intelligence authorities believe was shot down by a surface-to-air missile.
"It's just brought everyone, everything back," said Greg Burrows, Mann's brother. "It's just...ripped our guts again."
Burrows said his family was struggling to understand how they could be struck by such horrible luck on two separate occasions with the same airline.
"She just lost a brother and now a stepdaughter, so..." he said of his sister, his voice trailing off.
Rizk and her husband, Albert, of Melbourne were returning home from a four-week holiday in Europe, said Phil Lithgow, an acquaintance.
"They were very lovely people," Lithgow said.
(China Daily 07/19/2014 page7)
