Ukrainian Mom Photographed Dead in a Gutter Was Silicon Valley Tech Worker

The mom who was killed with her kids while trying to evacuate the Ukrainian city of Irpin has been identified as a Silicon Valley tech worker.

Photos of Tatiana Perebeinis and her kids lying in a gutter, surrounded by suitcases and pet carriers, ran on the front page of The New York Times on Tuesday and reverberated around the world. Palo Alto startup SE Ranking, a tech company whose 110 employees are split between California and Ukraine, confirmed the photos showed Tatiana, 43, their Irpin-based chief accountant, her daughter Alise, 9, and son Nikita, 18.

“We are so shocked, saddened, devastated, angry,” company spokeswoman Ksenia Khirvonina told the San Francisco Chronicle. “There are no words to describe our emotions, we are so heartbroken.”

Tatiana decided to stay in Irpin when the invasion began because her teen son wasn’t allowed to leave the country under martial law. But they decided to flee when a bomb hit their apartment building in Irpin, Khirvonina said.

Perebeinis’ husband, Serhiy Perebeinis, was in another city in eastern Ukraine to care for his sick mother when his family made the decision to evacuate, he said in an interview in The New York Times.

He reportedly only learned of her death from social media posts after pictures of the slain family went viral on Twitter. In a gut-wrenching post on his Facebook page after the death of his wife and children, Serhiy wrote: “He took them all… What is next? I must see you one last time. Forgive me, I didn’t cover you.”

Tatiana, her children and parents had left their home in Irpin with a plan to flee toward Kyiv on Saturday, according to the Times. They reportedly left their apartment at 7 a.m. with a volunteer at the church they attended who was helping them evacuate the city.

While driving toward the capital, the family was eventually forced to leave their car to cross a bridge near Kyiv, where a mortar shell landed nearby, killing Tatiana, her two children, and the church volunteer. Tatiana’s parents survived the incident.

Tatiana’s colleagues, friends, and family members have shared tributes to the mother of two across social media. One colleague described her on Facebook as “bright, witty, and determined.”

“A couple of weeks ago we drank wine, laughed, and walked among the mountains together,” one colleague wrote. “You were like a big sister.”