‘My little girl was trapped’: FIU student Alexa Duran died in bridge collapse, dad says
March 17, 2018 by admin
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Florida International University student Alexa Duran was driving her gray Toyota SUV under a pedestrian bridge in front of the university on Thursday when it collapsed, trapping her car beneath the rubble.
Her father, Orlando Duran, confirmed 18-year-old Alexa’s death to el Nuevo Herald on Friday afternoon.
“My little girl was trapped in the car and couldn’t get out. She died when the bridge collapsed on top of her car,” Duran said in Spanish, speaking to el Nuevo Herald from London, where he was traveling when he got the news.
“This is going to be the longest and saddest trip of my life. I don’t want to return,” he said as he waited for his flight home.
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Alexa Duran was driving past FIU with her friend Richard Humble, who was in the passenger seat, when the bridge collapsed, according to her friend Manny Perez. Humble was able to get out of the car, but was unable to get Duran out, Perez said. Humble sustained some injuries and is in a neck brace and a leg brace but is otherwise in stable condition.
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Cellphone footage captured by Suzanne Bermudez on Thursday shows first responders and civilians as they search for survivors. Suzanne Bermudez
“The way the bridge fell, it fell on the driver’s side,” Perez said, speaking to the Miami Herald on Thursday evening outside FIU’s family reunification center. He and another friend, Lynnet Gomez, both FIU students, had come to the center seeking information about Duran’s whereabouts.
Gomez described Duran as “an awesome person.”
“She is the funniest person I know,” she said.
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Aerial footage shows what the scene at the FIU pedestrian bridge collapse looks like the morning after on March 16, 2018. Pedro PortalMiami Herald
Duran was a freshman political science major at FIU and met Gomez during freshman orientation last year. Both girls were in the newest pledge class for the Alpha Xi Delta sorority at FIU.
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Duran enrolled at FIU after attending Archbishop Edward A. McCarthy High School in Southwest Ranches. She also went to Country Club Middle School in unincorporated Miami-Dade County, according to her Facebook profile.
Perez, a junior at FIU, said Duran is “one of those people who lights up any room, any circumstance, situation. She always makes her presence known.”
Duran is the first victim to be identified of the six people confirmed dead in the accident.
The bridge was intended to give FIU students a safe way to cross Tamiami Trail and was part of a project to link FIU’s Modesto A. Maidique Campus to the city of Sweetwater, where several thousand students live. The walkway had not yet opened to student traffic.
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FILE from March 10, 2018: Early morning view of the main span of the FIU-Sweetwater UniversityCity Pedestrian Bridge as it was lifted from its temporary supports, rotated 90 degrees across an eight-lane thoroughfare and lowered into its permanent position over SW 8 Street. The 174-foot, 950-ton section of the bridge was built adjacent to Southwest Eight Street using Accelerated Bridge Construction (ABC) methods, which are being advanced at FIU’s Accelerated Bridge Construction University Transportation Center (ABC-UTC). The bridge was designed by FIGG Bridge Engineers and built by MCM. Barnhart Crane and Rigging operated the Self-Propelled Modular Transporters that placed the bridge on its permanent supports.
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Russia spy poisoning: 23 UK diplomats expelled from Moscow
March 17, 2018 by admin
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Image copyright
Reuters
Britain’s ambassador to Russia, Laurie Bristow, was summoned to Russia’s foreign ministry
Russia is to expel 23 British diplomats amid tensions over the nerve agent attack on a former spy and his daughter in the UK.
The Russian foreign ministry said staff from the UK’s Moscow embassy would be expelled within a week.
It also said it would close the British Council in Russia, which promotes cultural ties between the nations, and the British Consulate in St Petersburg.
The move comes in response to Britain’s decision to expel 23 Russian diplomats.
They were ordered to leave over the incident on 4 March which the UK government has blamed on Russia – but which Russia denies.
The UK Foreign Office said in a statement that it had “anticipated a response of this kind” from Russia and the National Security Council would meet early next week to consider its next steps.
- What we know so far
- Why does UK think it was Russia?
- What are Novichok agents and what do they do?
Russian ex-spy Sergei Skripal, 66, and his daughter Yulia Skripal, 33, remain critically ill in hospital, after they were found unconscious on a bench in Salisbury, Wiltshire.
The UK government says they were poisoned with a nerve agent of a type developed by Russia called Novichok, and PM Theresa May has said she believes Moscow is “culpable”.
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EPA/ Yulia Skripal/Facebook
Sergei Skripal, 66, and his daughter Yulia, 33, are in a critical condition in hospital
On Friday, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said it was “overwhelmingly likely” that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered the nerve agent attack.
Responding, Mr Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the accusations were “shocking and unforgivable”.
Britain’s ambassador to Russia, Laurie Bristow, was summoned to Russia’s foreign ministry on Saturday and was handed Russia’s response to the UK’s sanctions.
Mr Bristow, after leaving the meeting, said that the UK had no quarrel with the Russian people and would “always do what is necessary to defend ourselves”.
Analysis
By Sarah Rainsford, BBC Moscow correspondent
The British ambassador had been expecting this call for three days.
In the end, he spent just over 10 minutes in the foreign ministry where he was handed Russia’s counter-sanctions.
The response from Moscow is robust and does go further than the UK measures. But it doesn’t appear calculated to escalate tensions.
The ministry has stuck to 23 for 23 in terms of diplomatic expulsions, no more.
And while it is ordering the closure of the UK consulate in St Petersburg – both Moscow and Ekaterinburg remain open.
Russia’s response has also targeted the British Council, which promotes cultural ties.
That will be seen by Britain as a low blow, hurting the Russian people – not the British government. But the UK is unlikely to want to retaliate in kind.
The council’s activity here had already been significantly curtailed by Moscow after the last crisis in relations, when Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned.
Meanwhile, the double tactic of denial and distraction here continues, both in comments by officials, and in the mocking, dismissive coverage of the Skripal case on state-run media.
The Russian foreign ministry said in a statement that the British diplomats would be “declared persona non grata”, adding that it “reserves the right to introduce other retaliatory measures in case of further unfriendly actions”.
It said it was responding to “provocative actions” by Britain – and “unproven accusations” that the Russian state was behind the poisoning.
A Downing Street spokesman said the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) had been invited to come to the UK to take a sample of the nerve agent.
- Conspiracy theories and denial in Russia
- UK Russia response going to plan so far
Meanwhile, the Metropolitan Police have launched a murder investigation into the death of businessman and Kremlin critic Nikolai Glushkov – a Russian exile who was found dead in his south-London home on Monday.
A post-mortem examination found the 68-year-old died from “compression to the neck”.
Police say there is no evidence at this stage linking his case with the Salisbury attack.
However, they have begun to contact a number of Russian exiles to discuss their safety as they investigate the murder.
Russia has also opened criminal investigations into “the murder” of Nikolai Glushkov, and the “attempted murder” of Ms Skripal and her father.