The University of Windsor is marking the one year anniversary of a plane crash that killed five members of the school community.
It was 9:42 p.m. on January 8, 2020 when the Iranian military shot down Ukrainian International Airlines Flight PS752.
"We faced a terrible reality that members of our campus family had been lost when Ukraine International Airlines flight 752 was shot down over Iran," says U Windsor President Robert Gordon. "There was sadness, disbelief, shock and anger."
Gordon says the friends and colleagues who died will not be forgotten by the University of Windsor family. "We have established a memorial scholarship to honour them and joined with the City of Windsor to establish a riverfront memorial that will serve as a tangible and permanent reminder of the lives they lived, their great and lasting impact on our community, and the unlimited potential that was lost to the world."
The school says it remembers doctoral student of civil engineering Pedram Jadidi; biology research assistant Samira Bashiri and her spouse Hamidreza Setareh Kokab, a PhD candidate in mechanical engineering; and civil engineering doctoral student Zahra Naghibi and her spouse Mohammad Abbaspour Ghadi.
More than 100 of the 176 victims of the plane crash had ties to Canada, and at least 55 were Canadian citizens.
In a statement on Friday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau honoured the victims and expressed solidarity with their loved ones.