5-6-2024 (HANOI) Nguyen Bich Ngoc, a 27-year-old Vietnamese student who went missing in Europe earlier this year, has been pronounced dead by her family on Tuesday (June 4), after more than five months of extensive searching efforts.
“There was no miracle,” said Vu Quang Minh, the Vietnamese Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany, conveying the tragic news. “According to a family statement, Ngoc has died in France. I send my deepest condolences to the family.”
Ngọc, known by her nickname “Emma” to foreign friends, had been studying in a postgraduate program at the SKEMA Business School’s Grand Paris Campus since 2022. She had undertaken an internship in Amsterdam, Netherlands, from September to December 2023.
On January 28, Ngoc’s parents in Vietnam had a two-hour-long call with her, which was the last they heard from their daughter for about a month. According to Ngoc’s father, Nguyen Cao Dang, the family had been doing everything in their power to search for her, believing that she went missing in either France or the Netherlands.
Ngọc, who was due to graduate in June, had been offered a job at an American investment bank believed by the family to be Goldman Sachs’ Amsterdam branch, where she had previously worked as an intern. Her parents shared that Ngọc had rented a room in an apartment run by a Senegalese woman during her internship in Amsterdam. However, her European visa was set to expire in September, and the family believed that Ngoc returned to France as the visa deadline approached.
Dang expressed the family’s anguish, stating that they had been sleepless, waiting for news of Ngọc. In May, he traveled to Hagen in an effort to search for his daughter, but his efforts proved fruitless.
