Indiana woman texted husband just before DC plane crash. She was ‘a giver,’ he said
Asra Hussain-Raza — her hair as black as obsidian, her broad smile white like ivory — met her husband, Hamaad Raza, at the University of Indiana in Bloomington.
It was through the Muslim Student Association.
Him: a freshman from St. Louis studying finance, class of 2021.
Her: a sophomore from Carmel, Indiana, studying health care management, class of 2020.
She graduated with honors.
Married in 2023, they’d only recently moved to Washington, D.C. for Asra’s consulting job.
Hamaad Raza was at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Wednesday waiting for his wife to return home from a twice-monthly work trip to Wichita, when he received her text.
“We’re landing in 20,” Hussain-Raza, 26, wrote, according to multiple media reports.
Raza texted his wife back, but when his messages bounced back, he “realized something might be up,” he told CBS affiliate WUSA.
“I always help her load the bag into the car and give her a big hug and a kiss, and then, off we go,” Raza told NBC Nightly News.“I had dinner waiting at home.”
His wife, he continued, was “such a giver.”
“She gave and she gave and she gave, almost to the point of where she didn’t think about herself enough,” he said.
At about 8:50 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, Hussain-Raza was killed when American Airlines passenger flight 5342 and a military Black Hawk helicopter collided midair over the Potomac River, as the plane was descending to land.
“She gave a lot, but she had so much more to give,” Raza told WFIU/WTIU News. “But if there was ever someone who took advantage of their 26 years of life, it was her.”
Her father-in-law, Hashim Raza, told Indianapolis television station 13 WTHR that his daughter-in-law was “a beautiful woman, brilliant, always smiling, artistic, academically brilliant.”
Her special chocolate chip cookies
The IndyStar reported that when Hashim Raza was asked to recall something small and personal about his daughter-in-law, he recalled how when she visited her in-laws in St. Louis, she always took the time to cook her special chocolate chip cookies.
“I remember she called me and she said, ‘I think I’ve made the best chocolate chip cookie I’ve ever made and I want to make it for you,’” Hashim Raza said. “I remember my wife was trying to give some away to other people and I wouldn’t let her.”
Hashim Raza said he never asked her for the recipe, because he always thought there would be time to do so.
On Facebook Imam Ahmed Alamine, a board member of the Greater Indianapolis Multifaith Alliance, shared tribute to Hussain-Raza. He knew her parents, Saba and Altaf Hussin, as community leaders.
“They are family to me,” he wrote.
He officiated at Hussain-Raza’s wedding.
“Asra,” he wrote, “blossomed into a remarkable young woman—radiant with kindness, faith, and generosity ... To the Hussain and Raza families—you have lost Asra, but you have gained an entire community who is supporting you and praying for you. Her legacy of love and kindness will never fade.”
This story was originally published February 3, 2025 at 2:37 PM with the headline "Indiana woman texted husband just before DC plane crash. She was ‘a giver,’ he said."
