Promising teen skaters, ex-world champions among victims of Washington air crash

WASHINGTON – World champion figure skaters, a pilot planning his wedding and teenage skaters seen as the “future of the sport” were among the 67 victims of the deadly midair collision between a commercial jet and a US Army helicopter near Washington.

All 64 people aboard the American Eagle – American Airlines’ regional branch – flight that took off from Wichita, Kansas, including 60 passengers and four crew members, and all three soldiers aboard the helicopter were killed after

the two aircraft collided

on the night of Jan 29, causing a fiery explosion.

Here is what we know about some of the victims:

Asra Hussain Raza

Mrs Raza, 26, sent a text to her husband Hamaad from the doomed flight as they approached Washington, saying she would land in about 20 minutes.

Mr Hamaad Raza, 25, who was waiting at the airport for her arrival, never received another message, his father, Mr Hashim Raza, told Reuters.

“Asra was everything to us,” Mr Hashim Raza, holding back tears with a quavering voice, said in a telephone interview as he travelled from Missouri to Washington to meet his son.

“And now my son is a widower at 25. What do I say to him? They planned to have children, they were so much looking forward to that.”

The couple met at Indiana University Bloomington, where Mrs Raza studied corporate finance and was a straight-A college student.

Mr Hashim Raza said that when his son first met Asra, he declared, “I’m going to marry her”.

Mrs Raza later earned her master’s degree in public health from Columbia University and got a job with a consulting group in Washington, with the ultimate goal of working for the government to improve public health, her father-in-law said.

“All she wanted to do was help people, and DC, she thought, was the place to achieve her goals,” Mr Hashim Raza said. “And she was such a great cook – Indian, Italian, Chinese food. I told her to open a restaurant.”

She travelled to Wichita about once or twice a month to help turn around a hospital, Mr Hashim Raza said.

“She was an extremely caring person,” he said. “She’d call just to say, ‘I love you’.”

Spencer Lane and Jinna Han

Spencer, 16, and Jinna, 13, trained almost every day at the Skating Club of Boston in Norwood, Massachusetts, according to the club’s executive director, Mr Doug Zeghibe. The Lane family lived in Rhode Island, and the Han family lived in the Boston area.

The two young skaters had been attending US Figure Skating’s National Development Camp in Wichita, an elite training camp that followed last week’s US national championships for skaters seen as “the future of the sport”, Mr Zeghibe said.

“Spencer, in the best way possible, was a crazy kid – highly talented, incredibly talented,” Mr Zeghibe told reporters at the club on Jan 30. “Has not been skating that long and just rocketing to the top of the sport – very fun, very cerebral, a very good thinker.”

Spencer posted a photo of the wing of the plane before it took off from Wichita on Instagram, according to media reports, with a caption listing Washington as the destination.

In another post, he said qualifying for the camp had been a long-time goal. He thanked coaches Yevgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, among others, for an “amazing experience”.

Jinna was a “wonderful kid”, Mr Zeghibe said.

“Wonderful parents, great athlete, great competitor, loved by all,” he told reporters.

Spencer’s mother, Christine, and Jinna’s mother, Jin, were also on the plane. Both were “role model parents” who made a lot of sacrifices to help their children excel in the sport, Mr Zeghibe said.

Yevgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov

The Russian-born Shishkova and Naumov, who were a married couple, won the world championship in pairs figure skating in 1994 and had coached at the Skating Club of Boston since 2017.

“They were talented and beautiful people,” said Ms Ludmila Velikova in St Petersburg, where she trained both skaters when they were children.

“Zhenya (Shishkova) trained with me from the age of 11 and Vladik (Naumov) from age 14. They were like my own children.”

The couple’s son, Maxim, also a skater, finished in fourth place in the men’s free skate at the US national championships last week. He left Wichita after the competition and was not on the Jan 29 flight.

Mr Zeghibe described Vadim Naumov as an “old-school” coach who applied the strict “Russian method” to his students.

Ms Shishkova, Mr Zeghibe said, was incredibly tough and resilient, as many female pairs skaters are.

“You could not see Genia without breaking into a smile,” he said, using a nickname for her.

Sam Lilley, Ian Epstein, Jonathon Campos, Danasia Elder

Mr Lilley, 28, was one of two pilots on the plane, serving as the first officer, his father, Mr Timothy Lilley, said in a Facebook post.

“I was so proud when Sam became a pilot,” wrote Mr Timothy Lilley, himself a pilot, who was in New York at the time of the crash. “Now it hurts so bad I can’t even cry myself to sleep.”

Mr Sam Lilley was engaged to be married later in 2025, his father said. The Lilley family has ties to Savannah, Georgia, reported Fox 5 Atlanta.

“This is undoubtedly the worst day of my life,” Mr Timothy Lilley told the television station.

Flight attendant Ian Epstein was an outgoing person who loved his job, his former wife, Ms Debi Epstein, told the Charlotte Observer.

“He made flying fun for the passengers on the plane so they didn’t get scared,” she said.

“He was always the jokester and just doing the announcements with the twist.”

Mr Epstein had two daughters, including one who is getting married in eight weeks, Ms Epstein told the newspaper.

Mr Campos was the captain of the plane, and Ms Elder was the second flight attendant, according to media reports.

Ryan O’Hara

Staff Sergeant Ryan O’Hara was one of three soldiers on board the Black Hawk helicopter, a US official confirmed.

He attended Parkview High School in Gwinnett County, Georgia, where he was a member of the school’s Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, or ROTC, a programme that trains high school students for military service.

In a Facebook post that was later removed, the ROTC wrote, “Ryan is fondly remembered as a guy who would fix things around the ROTC gym as well as a vital member of the rifle team”, according to local media reports.

Staff Sgt O’Hara had a wife and one-year-old son, the post said.

Inna Volyanskaya

Russian-born Volyanskaya, a skating coach in the Washington area, was on board the plane, according to an X post from US Representative Suhas Subramanyam and a report from the Russian news agency Tass.

Ms Volyanskaya competed as a pairs skater for the Soviet Union in the 1980s. She coached young skaters at the Washington Figure Skating Club, according to the club’s website.

In a statement on Jan 30, the club did not confirm whether any member or coach was on the flight but said it was “devastated” by news of the crash.

“More information will be posted when appropriate,” the club said. REUTERS