HARLINGEN – Days after the fatal attack at a Christmas market in Berlin, Germany, one Rio Grande Valley man is getting ready to fly across an ocean to be by his injured brother’s side.

The Ramirez family can’t wait to embrace their loved one.

“My heart is broken; of course my heart is already there in Berlin with him. I’m here, but I’m so far away,” Armando Ramirez said.

He said when he learned of the attack at a Christmas market in Berlin he immediately thought of his brother, Richard.

“I just spoke to him about two weeks ago. He was in Dallas visiting my sister,” he recalled.

Richard Ramirez, a San Benito native, has been living in Berlin for more than a decade with his partner, Peter.

Ramirez received a call on Wednesday advising him that Richard was in intensive care, recovering from the attack.

“He’ll be in ICU for a couple more days, maybe three more days, and they had to remove a part of his colon and his ACL is pretty messed up. So he’ll hopefully be in a regular room and will recover, hopefully physically but he’s gonna need a lot of grief counseling,” Ramirez said.

The doctors informed Ramirez that his brother’s partner passed away.

“The doctor told my sister that he has acute trauma because his partner didn’t make it,” he said.

Ramirez said his sister will fly to Berlin Friday morning and he’ll fly right after Christmas.

“The FBI called my sister and we’re eligible for assistance, so they just said to let them know when they want to leave and they’ll make all the arrangements,” he said.

Ramirez said he knows traveling may be dangerous at this time but nothing could stop him from being by his brother’s side.

“It’s always in the back of our minds, even since before 9/11, it’s always there lingering like a shadow,” he explained. “My main priority is to see my brother.”

Ramirez said his family plans to bring Richard back home to the Valley.

“I think he needs to be around us. We need to be around him. We need to come together… as a family, that’s what families do especially this time of year,” he said.

Ramirez is asking for a prayer.

“Just keep us in their prayers and pray to make this stop,” he said.

He added this is a time when they’ll need to lean on their family and faith.