A newlywed couple from New York, the bride’s brother and his pregnant wife have been identified as the four Americans killed in a building collapse in Athens, Greece.
Ian Alexander Kirkpatrick, 37, and his 34-year-old wife, Florida Hoxha, died with Hoxha’s older brother, Florin Hoxha, and his wife, Eris Cani, in the Sept. 25 accident in the Greek capital, Newsday reported.
The tragedy occurred less than a month after Kirkpatrick and Florida Hoxha were married in a Long Island ceremony on Aug. 30, according to Newsday.
Investigators believe a gas leak may have caused an explosion that brought down the couple’s two-story Airbnb in Athens’ historic Plaka district.
Kirkpatrick, a senior lawyer and Bronx native, married Hoxha during a Long Island ceremony on Aug. 30.
After the wedding, the couple spent a week in Mexico before traveling to Greece for a nine-day honeymoon.
They were killed on the day they were supposed to return to the United States. The couple had checked in for their Delta flight but never arrived at Athens International Airport.
Kirkpatrick, a 2007 graduate of Huntington High School, worked in Williamsburg, Virginia, as a research analyst for Strategic Analysis Enterprises before traveling to China, where he became an intern at Citi, according to his LinkedIn profile.
From June 2012 to June 2014, he worked as an analyst for Chinese marketplace company Dianrong. He then returned to New York and spent seven years working in banking.
For the five years before his death, Kirkpatrick worked for Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, the Japanese financial services company.
His mother, Suzanne Nelson, remembered Kirkpatrick as “just a wonderful, incredible human being.”
“He was creative. He spoke Chinese. He had a zest for life,” she told Newsday.
Nelson described Florida Hoxha, Kirkpatrick’s wife of only one month, as “the sun in the solar system.”
Florida Hoxha, who graduated from the City University of New York School of Law and Emory University, had traveled to Greece with her brother, Florin Hoxha. He died in the collapse along with his wife, Eris Cani, who was five and a half months pregnant.
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Hoxha had worked for the New York Legal Assistance Group for five years and was also considering a career in politics, according to Westchester County legislator Vedat Gashi.
“She cared deeply about her environment,” Gashi told ABC7. “We have similar backgrounds. We’re both Albanian Americans. And she had a deep passion for helping other people.”
Gashi described Hoxha as “smart, ambitious and devoted to her community.”
“I was deeply impressed by her, and I was excited to see where her passion and drive would take her,” he said. “That future was taken far too soon.”
Florin Hoxha, 36, an Emory University alumnus, was also killed in the Athens building collapse. He had co-founded the construction company Prufock Builders with his brother, Clyde.
Cani worked as an assistant professor of pharmacy practice at Touro College, a private university with a strong Jewish tradition.
Her background has always been in pharmacy since starting as an intern at Rite Aid in Philadelphia at 2007, where she worked for seven years.
She graduated from Temple University School of Science and Technology in 2009 before receiving her doctorate in 2014.
Cani practiced at the Bronx Lebanon Hospital, specializing in infectious diseases, and held residencies at the Einstein Medical Center in Pennsylvania and the SUNY Downstate campus in Brooklyn.
Edmond Hings, 78, and his Greek wife of 11 years Athena Papaprescou, 77, were also killed.
Greek authorities are still investigating the cause of the building collapse – almost a week later.
Investigators believe a gas leak happened in the apartment where Hings and his wife were staying.
But officials are now examining adjacent buildings after they were “deemed dangerous,” Paris Charlaftis, the Athens deputy mayor, told Greek outlet To Vima.
“The question is whether there is a risk that they could collapse, whether they are on the verge of collapse,” he said.