A ‘healthy and vibrant’ 40-year-old woman mysteriously died minutes after stepping off a plane in Dubai on Friday.
Brandi Hodges from Chicago had just de-boarded a flight from New York City when she suddenly felt faint, and passed out twice before she died, her family member told ABC 7.
Hodges had been traveling with her cousin, who called back to the states to tell her sister Gloria Ray-Banks (who is Hodges’s other cousin) the tragic news.
Ray-Banks said Hodges was in good health, and this was not her flight trip out of the country.
‘My sister called me at approximately 1:30 this morning,’ Gloria Ray-Banks said on Friday, adding that she expected to hear the women had arrived safely at their destination in Dubai.
‘She called and started crying hysterically,’ Ray-Banks said.
That’s when she learned the scant details about what happened to Hodges.
When Hodges and her cousin landed on their Emirates flight from New York to Dubai, Hodges started to express that she wasn’t felling well.
‘So they sat down, and Brandi fainted,’ Ray-Banks said. ‘So then, my sister went and got one of the flight attendants.’
Hodges regained consciousness, was given oxygen and ice, but then fainted again within moments.
She was then placed on an ambulance by paramedics, but her cousin said they never made it off the airport property.
‘After so many minutes and they didn’t pull off, my sister looked back to see why they had not left. Brandi wasn’t back there,’ Ray-Banks said.
Unbeknownst to her cousin, Hodges had been taken off the ambulance and taken to a medical room in the airport.
It was there that paramedics tried to revive her with an automated external defibrillator, but they were not successful, and Hodges was pronounced dead.
Hodges body will be able to be returned to the US until Sunday, as many businesses are closed in Dubai due to the Eid al-Fitr holiday.
It’s estimated the cost of bringing Hodges’ body back home with be approximately $6,000.
SOURCE: Daily Mail, Stephanie Haney
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