Colombian Plane Crash Survivor Has Family In North Texas
Follow CBSDFW.COM: Facebook | Twitter
NORTH TEXAS (CBSDFW.COM) - Brazil is in the middle of three days of national mourning. The country's president, Michel Temer, made the declaration Tuesday. The grieving comes after a plane carrying the Chapecoense soccer team -- on the way to a championship game -- went down in Colombia.
It is now known that at least 71 people were killed in the charter plane crash. The official number of victims dropped after investigators learned there were four people listed on the flight manifest that never boarded the plane.
Today, there is also news that the pilot of the plane requested priority-landing status while flying in poor weather over a mountainous region.
Among those on the flight were members of the soccer team, journalists and flight staff from Bolivia. The plane went down in the mountains outside Medellin, Colombia – about 22 miles from the international airport in Rionegro.
There were only six people who survived the crash and today we learned one of those survivors has family here in North Texas.
Flight attendant Ximena Suarez is listed as stable, but is expected to undergo more surgery sometime today.
In an exclusive CBS 11 News interview, the flight attendant's cousin, Ana Rodriguez Suarez, said Ximena not only survived the crash, but has already reached out to her family here in North Texas.
Ana, who lives in Arlington, explained to CBS 11 that her cousin told the family that she moved to the back of the plane as it went down. According to Ana, Ximena broke bones in her legs, back and neck when the plane went down.
The crash happened around 9:00 CST Monday night. Rescuers found Ximena four and a half hours later and she was conscious. Members of her family are on their way to South America to see her this morning.
Ximena and a flight technician are the only two crewmembers that survived.
While Ana says her family is relieved they are also heartbroken. "What can I say to a person who lost a loved one?" She asked. "I can only cheer up and be so happy, because she's alive when so many people lost their lives. I'm grateful. All my whole family, my grandmother, my father, my mother, everybody's all grateful she's alive, but at the same time we're devastated because we lost a friend. The captain, the co-pilot and one of the reporters was a good friend of the family, so at the same time we all lost someone."
Remarkably, Ximena was able to ask that her father be contacted and later record a cell phone video and send it to her family. Ana played the message, which was in Spanish, and explained, "She said, 'Cousins I just want to let you know that I love you and I'm not injured as much. And I don't know when I'm gonna go home, but I'm gonna to go home, and I can't wait to be with you all.' That's what she said and that's the only, actual recording that we have from her."
It is being reported that investigators are considering the possibility that the plane ran out of fuel about five minutes before it was to land.
Crews on the ground will continue to remove bodies from the crash site today. Investigators have already found the plane's black boxes and they are said to be in excellent condition.
(©2016 CBS Local Media, a division of CBS Radio Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)