Barcelona’s victims include man celebrating anniversary
PARIS (AP) — The dead and injured in Barcelona were a snapshot of the world — men, women and children from nearly three dozen nations — testifying to the huge global appeal of the sun-kissed city.
Families, friends and government officials from Paris to Sydney, San Francisco to Berlin scrambled Friday to discover whether their loved ones and citizens were among those mowed down by suspected Islamic extremists who zig-zagged down Barcelona’s always crowded Las Ramblas promenade in a van, killing 13 people and injuring 120 others.
A related attack early Friday morning in the popular Spanish seaside town of Cambrils, south of Barcelona, took the death toll to 14. Here is a look at some of the victims: Jared Tucker, 42, U.S.A. Jared Tucker has been confirmed as among those killed in a deadly truck attack in Barcelona, Spain, his family said on Friday.
Jared Tucker’s sister, Tina Luke, told The Associated Press that Tucker, 42, and his wife Heidi Nunes-Tucker were celebrating their first wedding anniversary with a visit to Barcelona.
Nunes-Tucker told NBC News that the couple were having drinks at a patio when her husband said he was going to the bathroom.
“Next thing I know, there’s screaming, yelling,” she said. “I got pushed inside the souvenir kiosk and stayed there hiding while everybody kept running by screaming.”
Jared Tucker worked with his father at a family-owned pool business in the Bay Area since he was 16, Dan Tucker said.
Jared Tucker leaves behind three daughters, his sister said in a message posted on a fundraising website. Pepita Codina, 75, Spain Pepita Codina’s death was confirmed on Twitter and Instagram by Xavier Vilamala, the mayor of Hipolit de Voldrega, the town of 3,000 people where she was from near Barcelona. Vilamala said on Twitter he was “very sad and distressed” by the news. Ana Maria Suarez, Spain The Spanish Royal family sent condolences to Suarez’s family in its Twitter account after Ana Maria died in the attack in the resort town of Cambrils.
According to local media, the woman was originally from the city of Zaragoza, and was on vacation with her family. Her husband and one of her sisters are injured in a hospital. Francisco Lopez Rodriguez, Spain One of his nieces, Raquel Baron Lopez, said on her Twitter account that Rodriguez, 60, died immediately when he was struck by the van.
“We are a broken family” Lopez posted on Twitter on Friday night.
The mayor of Lanteira, the southern town in Spain where Rodriguez was born, confirmed his death, as well as a delegate of the Spanish government in Granada who spoke with Spanish radio Cadena Ser.
While his age is not clear, relatives have told local media that Rodriguez was a 57-yearold machine operator who was strolling with his family along Las Ramblas when the attack occurred. His wife, badly injured in the attack, worked at a meat shop in Rubi, a nearby town where they both lived. Bruno Gulotta, 35, Italy A father from Legnano in northern Italy is being praised as a hero who protected his children during an attack in Barcelona.
One of his Gulotta’s work colleagues, Pino Bruno, told the Italian news agency ANSA that he saved the life of his two young children — Alessandro, 6, and Aria, 7 months — by throwing himself between them and the van that mowed people down.
Bruno said he spoke to Gulotta’s wife, Martina, and she told him her husband had been holding the 6-year-old’s hand on the tourist-thronged avenue in Barcelona when “the van appeared suddenly.”
“Everyone knelt down, instinctively, as if to protect themselves,” Bruno said, adding that Gulotta put himself in front of his children and was fatally struck.
Gulotta was a sales manager for Tom’s Hardware Italia, an online publication about technology. “Rest in peace, Bruno, and protect your loved ones from up high,” read one tribute on the company’s website. Luca Russo, 25, Italy One of Italy’s two victims in the Barcelona van attack is being mourned as a brilliant young engineer dragged to his death before his girlfriend’s eyes.
A determined Luca Russo, 25, already had a job in electronic engineering, no easy feat in Italy, where youth unemployment runs stubbornly high.
“We were investing in him, we wanted to make him grow professionally,” ANSA quot- ed Stefano Facchinello, one of the partners in the Padua area company where Russo had worked for a year, as saying.
Facchinello praised Russo Friday as a “willing, precise and punctual young man. He made an impression on us for his rationality and determination.”
Rosario Rizzuto, the rector at Padua University, where Russo studied, said the young man had “earned his degree brilliantly and got down to work.”
The girlfriend, Marta Scomazzon, who was hospitalized with a fractured foot and elbow, told an aunt that “we were walking together, then the van came on top of us.” Elke Vanbockrijck, Belgium Arnould Partoens, president of the KFC Heur Tongeren soccer team, said Vanbockrijck was at the club “nearly every day” ferrying her 10- and 14-year-old boys back and forth to training and matches. He described her as very committed.
“She was always positive,” he said in a phone interview. He said the team would hold a minute of silence before every match and training session this weekend.
Partoens said the family was on vacation in Barcelona. The boys and their father, a policeman, were unhurt, he said.
“The mother was in the wrong moment and the wrong place,” he said.
In a message of condolence on its Facebook page, the club said: “We deplore the death of Elke, the mother of two players from KFC Heur Tongeren. She was often at the club, and was committed to our club. We will always remember her as a happy woman, a caring mother and loving wife. Elke will be missed. Our deepest sympathy goes out to her two sons, her husband, family and loved ones.”