Man who lost family in Ethiopia crash wants Boeing punished or more people will die

Paul Njoroge, the man who lost his family when a Boeing 737 Max airplane crashed in Ethiopia, now wants the company probed and action taken, warning that more people will die otherwise.

Mr. Njoroge – who spoke on Wednesday during a congressional hearing in Washington – lost his wife, mother-in-law and three children during the March 10 crash.

He further accused Boeing of “utter prejudice and disrespect”, adding that they were majorly only focused on profits “at the expense of the safety of human life.”

“I miss their laughter, their playfulness, their touch. I am empty. I feel that I should have been on that plane with them. My life has no meaning. It is difficult for me to think of anything else but the horror they must have felt. I cannot get it out of my mind,” Mr. Njoroge said, as quoted by The Guardian.

“I speak for all of the families who lost loved ones whom they will never see again and who were tragically torn from their lives because of reckless conduct on the part of so many. Particularly Boeing, a company who became steadfast in its single-minded quest to place blame on so-called ‘foreign pilots’.”

The grieving 35-year-old investment professional further told the Congress that “another plane will dive to the ground killing me, you” if the company does not face consequences for its actions.

“In Canada, Independence Day was celebrated on 1 July. I stayed buried in my little house, in my grief, hearing the sounds of celebration and fireworks in the sky. But all I could think about was the 737 Max struggling to gain height and eventually diving to the ground, killing my whole family and 152 others,” he added.

“Without them I feel nothing. I’m empty,” Mr. Njoroge previously told Reuters by telephone from his company house in Bermuda. “The pain will never go away. I will think of them every minute for the rest of my life.”

The crash of the new Boeing 737 MAX model in Ethiopia, six minutes after take-off, came months after the same model crashed in Indonesia.

Preliminary reports in both cases highlighted the role of an automated system that erroneously pointed the plane’s nose down as pilots struggled to override it. The two crashes killed 346 people.