‘Broken-hearted’: Port Coquitlam family among those killed in Iran plane crash

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – A Vancouver-area family has been identified by a local group as being among those killed in the plane crash at Iran’s capital airport on Wednesday.

The Civic Association of Iranian Canadians in Vancouver says it’s received word the couple and their teenage son were aboard the flight which left 176 people dead when it went down shortly after takeoff. Sixty-three Canadians were among the dozens on board the airliner.

Kei Esmaeilpour, president of the association, says the world has lost “one of the best families.”

“I was really shocked and I was saddened about this,” he recalls feeling when he heard his friend, Ardalan Ebnoddin-Hamidi, his wife, and their 15-year-old son, had been killed. “Everybody is really broken-hearted in our community.”

Esmaeilpour says Niloofar Razzaghi had just finished her education to become a teacher, and remembers the couple’s son, Kamyar, as someone always eager to give back.

“Even when he was 10 years (old), he always tried to be volunteering for some society activity,” he explains.

According to the Civic Association of Iranian Canadians, the family of three had been visiting Iran on vacation for two weeks. Esmaeilpour says the father was an engineer who also worked with the association.

He describes the Ebnoddin-Hamidi family as being a symbol of the immigrant family in Canada.

“Every immigrant that came to this country, it takes a long time and it could be frustrating to develop their education and settle in this country,” he tells NEWS 1130.. “But this family did all of [it] together.”

Their names appear on a list of passengers that were onboard flight PS752 from Tehran to Kyiv, released by the airline.

“That was really hard,” Esmaeilpour recalls feeling when he heard the news.

In his last conversation with Ebnoddin-Hamidi, Esmaeilpour says his friend expressed concern about being back in Iran.

“I just talked to him before his trip, and he said ‘I worry a little bit about the risk of being in Iran.’ I told him, ‘You are just working for the society — nobody should harm you.’ But he said, ‘You know, (in) Iran, everything is a risk,'” Esmaeilpour recalls.

It’s believed another two families from the Vancouver-area may have also perished in the crash. Twenty-seven Edmontonians have been identified as victims of the crash.

There’s still no word on what may have caused the plane to crash, but Iranian officials have said it is believed to have been related to a mechanical issue. Ukrainian officials had, at first, agreed with that assumption, however, the embassy in Tehran has since released a new statement omitting that detail.

Iran’s civil aviation organization is also reportedly refusing to hand over the black boxes of the doomed airliner to Boeing.

A number of government officials, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, have offered their condolences as well as investigative support.

-With files from Martin MacMahon and The Associated Press