NPR host Adrian Ma has been navigating an unimaginable “emotional hell” since his girlfriend, Kiah Duggins, died in the recent American Airlines plane crash in Washington, D.C.
Ma, who cohosts NPR’s “The Indicator” podcast, was supposed to pick Duggins up from the local D.C. airport after her flight landed from Wichita, Kansas. When he never received a text about his girlfriend’s arrival, he asked for further details from an employee.
“The person at the counter just sort of gives me, like, a blank expression,” Ma recently recalled to NPR, noting he then received a text from a friend. “She says, ‘I think you’re supposed to pick Kiah up at the airport tonight. Do you know what flight she was on?’ And I tell her the number and she starts breathing faster. And she says, ‘Well, I’m seeing this thing on the internet about a crash near the airport.’ And my stomach drops.”
News broke on January 29 that an American flight traveling from Wichita to D.C. had collided with a military helicopter and crashed into the Potomac River. There were no survivors among the 60 passengers and four crew members on the commercial flight.
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Since learning of Duggins’ passing at age 30, Ma noted to the outlet that it has “basically felt like being in emotional hell.”
“There are reminders of Kiah everywhere. Her glasses are on the nightstand. Her clothes are in the closet. Little curls of her hair are scattered around,” he said. “I hear echoes of her voice sometimes, especially when I see something and I want to turn to her and say, like ‘Hey, check this out.’ Then, I realize I can’t do that anymore. So it’s just been a new level of pain that I didn’t know I could experience.”
While addressing Duggins’ death, Ma explained that he wanted to “exorcise the pain that keeps building in [his] chest.”
“I also wanted to talk about Kiah,” he said. “I think the more that I can plant just a little sense of who this person was in people’s minds, the more that she can live on, in a sense.”
Duggins was a civil rights attorney and an incoming law professor at the Howard University School of Law. In addition to her impressive career, Ma wants people to remember her positive spirit.
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“She loved to ask you, ‘What was a magical moment from your day?’” he recalled, further highlighting their multiple trips to Disney World. “She loved to say, ‘I have some issues with the company, but you go there and it’s just kind of awesome to get lost in this very fantastical place where everybody is kind of doing the same thing.’ It was really, really, really fun.”
He added, “The combination of those two things is one of the many reasons that I fell in love with her.”
Duggins has also been mourned by the likes of Tina Knowles and more.
“So very saddened by the loss of this beautiful accomplished young woman,” Knowles, 71, wrote via Instagram last month. “Rest in peace to her family sending condolences and love to you. God bless your soul, Kiah
.”
