A Pakistani national soccer team player who died in a migrant shipwreck off of Italy's southern coast embarked on the voyage to find medical treatment for her disabled 3-year-old son, her sister and a friend said Saturday. Hospitals had told her that help overseas could be her only option.
Shahida Raza, who also played for Pakistan's national field hockey team and was from Quetta in southwestern Baluchistan province, was one of at least 67 people who perished in the shipwreck. The overcrowded wooden boat they were traveling in broke apart in rough waters in the Ionian Sea off of Calabria before dawn last Sunday.
