Crash Survivor Doesn't Know He's an Orphan

But his aunt and uncle have arrived
By Nick McMaster,  Newser Staff
Posted May 13, 2010 1:00 PM CDT
Crash Survivor Doesn't Know He's an Orphan
9-year-old Dutch boy Ruben van Assouw is seen in his hospital bed in Tripoli's El Khadra hospital, Libya Thusday, May 13, 2010.   (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

Details continue to emerge on the ill-fated passengers on the Afrqiyah Airlines flight that crashed in Tripoli—including the heartbreaking detail that the lone survivor, 9-year-old Ruben van Assouw, has not yet been told that his parents and brother died in the crash. Also among the dead is Bree O'Mara, 42, an Irish author who was going to London to close a deal for her second book, report the London Times.

Ruben, whose aunt and uncle have arrived at the hospital, was returning with his family from a vacation in South Africa. "He's awake. He's talking. He is listening," said a Dutch official. "He hasn't been told yet, as far as we know, that his parents died." Rescuers found him still strapped to his seat amid the debris, semiconscious, reports AP. He had surgery yesterday on his legs.
(More plane crash stories.)

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