Deana Blanchard was only 17 years old when her life was tragically cut short on a busy Cairo road9 May 2013 – One October evening, the life of 17-year-old Deana was cut short on a road in Cairo. Deana was with four friends going to a birthday party. They had just gotten out of a taxi and were trying to cross the Nile Corniche in Maadi, a busy road running alongside the serenity of the Nile River. The taxi driver had let them off on the wrong side of the road. The traffic was heavy, chaotic. There were no traffic lights, no pedestrian crossings, just a constant stream of speeding, weaving cars, trucks and buses. There was nowhere to cross. You have to dart across several lanes of traffic to get to the other side. Deana was hit and killed by a speeding bus as she tried to cross the road. The bus driver didn’t even slow down.

“I was outside of Egypt at the time, travelling for my work. My brother-in-law called me to tell me the terrible news that my baby girl had been hit. You can imagine my guilt. I should have been in Cairo. I could have driven her to the party,” remembers the father.