Father of Boy Killed in Sri Lanka Easter Bombing Wants the World to Know What It Lost

The people behind the deadly Easter bombings in Sri Lanka have all been arrested or killed according to the country's acting police chief. 

Seven suicide bombers died when they detonated their devices at churches and hotels, killing 257 people. More than 70 suspects have been arrested in the investigation. 

While those arrests are good news, nothing can fill the void for families who lost loved ones in the bombings. This includes Alexander Arrow who lost his only child on that Easter Sunday. 

CBN News interviewed him just two days after the funeral of his only child. When we reached out to Arrow, he agreed to talk for just one reason: he wants the world to know about Kieran and just how great the 11-year-old was.

"It was the most difficult thing that I think a father can possibly do," Arrow said. "And it was compounded by the fact that Kieran was the most amazing person that I've had the privilege to know."

By all accounts, the boy not only enjoyed life but was also very advanced for his age especially in math and science.

"The things that an 11-year-old talks about are not usually these big grandiose goals but his career ambition was to be a Ph.D. neuroscientist and that's because he figured out that that's how he could apply his talents to help other people in the most significant way," Arrow noted. 

Kieran attended Sidwell Friends, an exclusive private school in Washington, D.C., but he was studying abroad in Sri Lanka staying with his mother and grandparents.

"About a year and a half ago, she thought it would be a great experience for him to spend a semester abroad studying in Sri Lanka and I had to agree it's an incredible cultural experience for a 10-year-old," Arrow told CBN News. 

It worked out so well that he stayed an additional two semesters. On Easter Sunday, he and his family were having breakfast at the Cinnamon Grand Hotel when a suicide bomber set off his explosives inside the hotel.  While his mother and grandmother survived their injuries, Kieran did not, a piece of shrapnel piercing his heart.

His father got the tragic call in the middle of the night. Arrow had seen his boy just weeks before when Kieran visited him in San Diego for spring break.

"Last time I hugged him goodbye was when he went to the airport to go back with his mom to Sri Lanka," he said. 

"I keep hearing his voice around every corner, I keep expecting him to say 'Hi Dad' and go on with one of his great questions," Arrow explained.

"I still have that feeling that it's all a bad dream," he added. 

Arrow said it's important to realize just how much was sacrificed in the senseless violence that day.

"He's articulate. He's funny. His sense of humor. His altruism. His ingenuity. His love for others," Arrow recalled. 

And he wants his son's dream of using his talents to help others to count for something.

"I have wonderful memories but I have a hole where all the future memories were going to be," Arrow told CBN News. "His teenage years that he won't have. His adult years that he won't have. His family that he won't have and what the world lost."