Philly and Delaware skating clubs confirm passengers with local ties among D.C. plane crash victims: ‘We are devastated’
The Philadelphia Skating Club said its community members were part of the deadly D.C. airline crash.
It may be days before all the victims are identified, and perhaps weeks or months before the cause of the collision of an American Airlines plane and a U.S. Army helicopter is determined, but for now the only certainty for the region’s figure skating community is an enduring sense of “immense grief.”
A number of passengers who were killed in Wednesday night’s tragic crash were part of that tight-knit community, including accomplished skaters, coaches, and family members. The Philadelphia Skating Club & Humane Society and the University of Delaware confirmed that several of the victims had local ties.
Three of the victims identified so far were from Delaware.
Officials on Thursday confirmed the inevitable: They had abandoned any hope of rescuing the victims in the chilly waters of the Potomac River, where the crash occurred about 9 p.m. Wednesday as the airliner was attempting to land at Reagan National Airport near Washington.
The plane was carrying 60 passengers and four crew members. Three soldiers were aboard the helicopter that evidently flew into the plane’s path. As of Thursday night, 28 bodies had been recovered.
Sen. Chris Coons (D., Del.) said Thursday night that three of the victims — Sasha Kirsanov, Sean Kay, and Angela Yang — were Delawareans.
Kirsanov was a former coach of the University of Delaware Figure Skating Club.
In a statement, university president Dennis Assanis said, “We believe two young skaters,” members of the university’s skating club, also were on board. The university did not identify them, but the skating club posted enthusiastically on social media last week about Kay and Yang’s forthcoming trip to Kansas — where the American Airlines flight originated — for a national development camp.
Assanis said that Kirsanov, who lived in Newark, and the skaters trained at the university’s High Performance Training Center, which “has been the training home for many years of multiple world-class skating champions and competitors.”
Kirsanov’s wife, Natalya Gudin, who is also a coach, told ABC News: “I lost everything. I lost my husband. I lost my students. I lost my friends.”
She said she last spoke to her husband Wednesday afternoon ahead of the flight’s boarding.
Gudin said she learned of the crash from the mother of a figure skater on the flight. “I need my husband back,” she said. “I need his body back.”
Coons said on social media: “My heart goes out to Sasha’s wife Natalia [and] the University of Delaware Figure Skating Club.”
In his statement, Assanis said: “The figure skating community is tight-knit, and many of our students and coaches have trained and competed alongside those who were lost.”
Wichita, Kan., from where the flight departed before heading to Washington, hosted the U.S. Figure Skating Championship last week, along with a training camp that wrapped this week.
“These athletes, coaches, and family members were returning home,” U.S. Figure Skating said in a statement Thursday morning. “We are devastated by this unspeakable tragedy and hold the victims’ families closely in our hearts.”
In Philadelphia, the skating club — the nation’s oldest — expressed “immense grief at the loss of so many talented skaters, their coaches and families.” The club had not disclosed the names of any local victims as of Thursday night.
“Sadly, one of the families lost just became members of our club and another shared his talent with us at our recent 175th Anniversary Gala,” the group said. “We share this loss and grief with the entire USFS Community.”
The statement continued: “We are devastated. … Our thoughts and prayers are with everyone during this tragic time.”
The Skating Club of Boston said it was grieving the loss of two skaters, their mothers, and two coaches, the Boston Globe reported. The coaches, Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, were Russian world champions and a married couple.
They won the pairs figure skating event at the 1994 World Championship and had been living in the United States since 1988 after retiring from competitive skating, transitioning into coaching roles.
The search for bodies was continuing Thursday night.
The tragedy evoked memories of the February 1961 plane crash in which all 18 members of the U.S. world championship figure skating team and 54 other passengers were killed.