Tragic News: Plane Carrying Brazilian Soccer Team Crashes, Killing Nearly All Members
An unfathomable tragedy.
An airplane carrying a Brazilian soccer team crashed in Colombia on Monday night, killing 75 of the 81 people onboard, including nearly the entire soccer squad.
According to NBCNews.com, the British Aerospace Avro RJ85 flight was headed from Santa Cruz in Bolivia to Medellin's international airport in poor weather conditions when it crashed around 10 p.m. ET, killing 75 people but miraculously leaving six survivors.
The six survivors? Three players from the Chapecoense Brazilian soccer team — Alan Ruschel, Jackson Ragnar Follmann and Hélio Hermito Zampier, flight staff Ximena Suarez and Erwin Tumiri and journalist Rafael Valmorbida.
According to the Associated Press, Ruschel suffered a spinal fracture and was awaiting surgery as of 11:15 a.m. ET on Tuesday morning. Zampier is listed in stable condition with skull and chest injuries and Follmann is being evaluated for currently unspecified injuries, as reported by the AP. Valmorbida had surgery and is recovering from his chest injuries while Suarez and Tumiri are each listed in stable condition.
Altogether, the plane was carrying 72 passengers, including the Chapecoense squad and 21 media members, and nine members of the flight crew.
Photos of the wreckage from the crash are painful to stomach, to say the least.
The Chapecoense team posted this Facebook video of its players in the airport, looking like business as usual, before the terrible tragedy.
One of the survivors, Ruschel, also posted this Snapchat story with himself and his teammate Danilo onboard the flight before the crash.
In an Instagram post by Ruschel's wife, Moa, she thanked God that her husband survived.
“Thank god Alan is in the hospital and stable," she said, as translated by BuzzFeed.com. "We are praying for all the others that still haven’t been rescued and sending strength to all the families. The situation is complicated, hard. Only god can give us strength. Thank you god.”
Prayers up for the families of all those lost and the survivors.
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