ST. CLOUD, Minn. — A St. Cloud resident was one of the passengers on an Ethiopian Airlines flight from Addis Ababa to Nairobi, Kenya, that crashed Sunday, according to friends and family, the St. Cloud Times reported.
Mucaad Hussein Abdalla, 31, was on the 737 MAX 8 that went down shortly after takeoff, according to his cousin Mohamed Warfa. He was more commonly known in the community by the name Siraaj.
Abdalla has lived in St. Cloud since 2006. He was a 2008 graduate of Apollo High School, and recently married."He was very playful guy — very funny, very eloquent," Warfa said. "He was very generous."
Warfa said Abdalla was very poetic in Somali, and spent a lot of free time in prayer at the mosque and playing soccer.
There were citizens of at least 35 countries aboard the flight, the airline said, including eight Americans. Of the 157 passengers and crew on board, there were no survivors.
"He actually departed from Morocco — he was with his wife who he recently married," Warfa said. "He departed from here sometime in late December and he was with her until this tragic accident."
Warfa said on March 9, Abdalla departed from Morocco on a trip that was to end i Nairobi, where he planned to stay for a bit before coming home to Minnesota.
The family has set up a GoFundMe account to help pay for his memorial.
"We're doing this to support the family," Warfa said. "His mother is in Africa. He was a source of income for his family back home — his mom and his brother and his sister. He was the breadwinner of the family... At this tragic moment we want to help with the financial burden.
"Everyone is very heartbroken in this community," he said.
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