A former New York investment banker painfully revealed he was forced to choose which one of his children to save when a series ofbombs tore through Sri Lankaon Easter Sunday.

Matthew Linsey, 61, and his family were on vacation, enjoying the breakfast buffet in the Shangri-La Hotel in Colombo when the attacks began, according toThe Times U.K.

“You can’t describe how bad it was. People were screaming. I was with my children. I couldn’t tell whether they were all right, it was dark,” Linsey toldThe Times.

Injured himself, Linsey did his best to sift through the rubble to get to his kids. “I couldn’t move them, they were both knocked out,” Linsey said toThe Times.

That’s when he says he had to make the decision no parent wants to make.

Linsey toldTheTimeshe thought Amelie was in better condition, so he grabbed Daniel in hopes of being able to get him medical attention.

“My son looked worse than my daughter. I tried to revive him,” Linsey told the outlet.

“A lady said she’d take my daughter. I carried my son downstairs to an ambulance, we took him to the hospital. I yelled, ‘Please help my son! Please help! Please help!'” Linsey said.

“I thought my daughter was better off. I couldn’t find her because I was with my son. They sadly passed away,” Linsey revealed toThe Times.

Amelie and Daniel are two of the four confirmed American deaths, according toThe New York Post.

Linsey explained that his children had so much life let to live.

Daniel was a student at Westminster Kingsway College and was deciding between attending university at Manchester or Leicester, according toThe Times.

His daughter Amelie was studying at Godolphin and Latymer School in Hammersmith.

“[She] was beautiful inside and out,” Linsey told the outlet.

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After the bombing, Linsey traveled back to his home in London, with the help of the US embassy.

His wife Angelina and his two other children David, 21, and Ethan, 12, were not on the trip with them and had stayed back in the U.K.

At this time, Linsey is trying to get the remains of his children home, according toThe Times.

The Shangri-La said in astatementon Facebook that the explosion went off in its Table One Restaurant around 9 a.m.

source: people.com