They flew to France to mourn a son who died in a devastating plane crash — only to find out he caused it.
The German parents of co-pilot Andreas Lubitz, 27, arrived in Marseille for a bereavement ceremony Thursday but were pulled aside by authorities and told their son had deliberately rammed Germanwings Flight 9525 into a French mountainside.
Their grief turned to “shock and horror” as they learned the news just minutes before the rest of the families were told, according to the Times of London.
French officials separated the couple from the rest of the families to prevent “a scene that could be painful for everyone,” the Times reported.
The couple was to be questioned by both French and German authorities, Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin said.
The victims’ relatives sat stunned when Robin revealed the details.
“When they were told it was deliberate,” a witness said, “some people screamed. Some broke down in tears.”
The crew’s families were bused to Seyne-les-Alpes, a village near the crash site that has become a headquarters for the investigation.
A second group, with more than 200 relatives, was taken to the village of Le Vernet, where they stood silently in a field together and faced the mountainside where their loved ones perished.
“The families need a chance to collect their thoughts here in the face of the mountain,” said Serge Gouteyron, of France’s Interior Ministry. “They need calm and privacy.”
Consulate officials from each of the countries that lost citizens in the crash joined the family members, along with psychological experts.
The mayor of Seyne-les-Alpes said that about a hundred locals had offered the victims’ relatives a place to stay for the night.
“We are used to welcoming people in these mountains, but today these same mountains are the shroud for 150 people, and that is particularly terrible,” Mayor Francis Hermitte said.
The family members won’t be flying over the crash site, as authorities deemed that too emotionally difficult for them.
Mourners who knew the slain passengers were shocked a pilot had deliberately crashed the plane.
“Whether he’s a terrorist or whether this is a suicide, I think that pilots should be more carefully followed,” said Sandrine Driessens, the niece of Christian Driessens, a 59-year-old from Belgium who died in the crash.
“If he had wanted to land on a town, can you imagine how many more deaths there would have been?”
Sandrine found consolation in the fact that her loved one didn’t have to suffer for long.
“You can hear screams [on the black-box recording] but at least they didn’t live through eight minutes of total horror,” she said.
The director of the German high school that lost 16 students was horrified by the news.
“It makes us furious. It makes us sad. It leaves us stunned,” said Ulrich Wessel of the Joseph-Koenig-Gymnasium school in Haltern, Germany.
With Post Wire Services