(WTVF/CNN) — One of the 157 people killed in the Ethiopian Airlines crash had ties to Tennessee.
According to CNN, Manisha Nukavarapu, a second-year resident physician at East Tennessee State University’s Quillen College of Medicine, was killed in the crash. The Nairobi, Kenya-bound plane went down shortly after taking off from Addis Ababa.
Friends said Nukavarapu had been looking forward to the trip overseas for weeks to go see a sister in Kenya who had just given birth to triplets.
"I was working with her until Friday, she left for Kenya on Saturday. So on Friday evening we had this last clinic duty and we waved goodbye to her and she said 'OK I am going to have the greatest vacation ever' and she waved goodbye and I did not know it would be the last goodbye,” Dr. Utsab Panta, an internal medicine resident.
The Quillen College of Medicine plans to have counselors on staff to meet with other residents to talk about the tragic loss of their classmate.
Just overnight, Australia and South Korean airlines have grounded their Boeing 737 Max 8 planes out of safety concerns.
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**CNN contributed to this report.
