Pavol Demitra - Death

Death

The 2011 Lokomotiv Yaroslavl plane crash occurred on 7 September 2011, at 4:02 PM local time, when a Yakovlev Yak-42 passenger aircraft, carrying the entire hockey team of Lokomotiv Yaroslavl of the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL), crashed near Yaroslavl, Russia, on its way to Minsk, Belarus, to start the 2011–12 KHL season.

The club's entire roster was killed in the plane crash. The airplane caught fire and crashed shortly after take-off, a mere 4 kilometers from the Tunoshna airport. Preliminary reports said that 43 of the 45 passengers on board had been killed, including the entire roster and 4 youth players, and that the remaining one, Alexander Galimov, was in critical condition. However, Galimov died a few days later. Demitra's agent, Matt Keator, confirmed his client's death.

Demitra is survived by his wife Maja and two children, Lucas and Zara. He was predeceased by his infant son, Tobias.

Following his death, the elementary school in Dubnica nad Váhom, which he had attended, and the ice hockey stadium in Trenčín, where he started his successful career together with famous Slovak ice players Zdeno Chára, Marián Hossa, Marcel Hossa, and Marián Gáborík were named after him.

Read more about this topic:  Pavol Demitra

Famous quotes containing the word death:

    It is difficult to accept death in this society because it is unfamiliar. In spite of the fact that it happens all the time, we never see it.
    Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (b. 1926)

    AIDS was ... an illness in stages, a very long flight of steps that led assuredly to death, but whose every step represented a unique apprenticeship. It was a disease that gave death time to live and its victims time to die, time to discover time, and in the end to discover life.
    Hervé Guibert (1955–1991)

    Time turns the old days to derision,
    Our loves into corpses or wives;
    And marriage and death and division
    Make barren our lives.
    —A.C. (Algernon Charles)