A mourning Manhattan mother whose free-spirited 26-year-old Israeli daughter was killed in Hamas’ brutal weekend rampage said Wednesday that “part of me died with her.”
“She had this smile that could melt a mountain of ice,” Hannie Ricardo, 58, of the Upper East Side, said of her daughter Oriya, who lived outside Tel Aviv.
Oriya Ricardo was discovered dead by her boyfriend as he searched for her Tuesday near the site of an all-night concert festival that turned into a Hamas killing ground, Hannie Ricardo said.
Oriya Ricardo was one of more than 250 people who perished after Hamas fighters rained bullets early Saturday on the Supernova Sukkot Gathering, a holiday festival in the desert near Israel’s border with Gaza.
Her body was discovered near an overturned car, Hannie Ricardo said.
The shaken mother, who moved to New York four years ago, described her daughter as an admirer of music and nature who made friends easily and loved to go to parties.
“She was the best thing in the world,” Hannie Ricardo said by phone. “She had the best sense of humor. She was funny, and a happy girl.”
“She was my heart,” added the mother of three, a Jerusalem-bred musician who is also in graduate school at Hunter College.
Oriya Ricardo, who worked at an insurance firm, never lived in New York, but she visited her mother in the city.
The full scope of the carnage from Hamas’ bloody weekend blitz is still coming into view, but the death toll has eclipsed 1,000, according to authorities. At least 22 Americans have died in the violence, the State Department said Wednesday.
Hannie Ricardo said she was stunned by the attack.
“It’s just a massacre,” she said. “They came in to kill.”
It is unclear how many, if any, of the dead Americans were New Yorkers.
Hamas has also taken Americans hostage, President Biden has said.
On Tuesday, the president described Hamas’ assault as “an act of sheer evil,” adding that civilians in Israel had been “slaughtered — not just killed, slaughtered.”
Mayor Adams’ office said Wednesday that it did not have any information about whether any of the dead were from New York City. The city is home to an estimated 1.6 million Jews, the largest Jewish population in any city on the globe.
Israel has launched intense retaliatory attacks on the blockaded Gaza Strip, and more than 1,000 Palestians have died, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
