NBC New York anchor Adam Kuperstein ‘shattered’ after dad dies of coronavirus alone, with 'stranger holding his hand’

Adam Kuperstein of NBC 4 News.(NBC 4 News)

NBC New York anchor Adam Kuperstein says his family is “shattered” after his father died — all alone — from coronavirus complications.

Kuperstein opened up about his heartbreaking experience in an emotional message shared on social media Monday.

“My dad died with a stranger holding his hand,” the anchor started the harrowing account of his father’s death, describing his isolation from loved ones during the last minutes of his life. He was “all alone.”

Kuperstein’s father took his last breath while his wife of 43 years was also alone at home, under quarantine, and his sons were “stuck in the epicenter of this crisis, where never-ending sirens echo throughout a deserted city," the anchor wrote.

The Emmy-winning journalist who anchors NBC 4 New York’s 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. weekend newscasts is no stranger to reporting on events of unimaginable suffering. In 2018, he was on the scene covering the deadly mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Fla. Just a few months later he traveled to Pittsburgh to cover the aftermath of the shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue.

But this week, his own life became tragic.

“All we could do was listen on the phone (from our separate quarantines), choking back tears, as the nurse informed us, ‘his heart stopped.’ That’s when our hearts broke,” he wrote.

“We were shattered.”

Kuperstein said that his mother also tested positive for COVID-19, and has only shown minor symptoms. But at a time when she needed to be comforted, she was all alone.

“It’s the cruelest part of this nightmare,” he wrote. “She deserves better. He deserved better.”

In the lengthy tribute to his dad, the anchor also shared the last picture of his father — an all-smiles snapshot outside of a Broadway theater.

“[He] came to this country with nothing, the son of Holocaust survivors, and achieved so much," Kuperstein wrote. "He made sacrifices for his family and taught his boys how to become gentlemen, never asking for anything in return. Just love.”

Kuperstein also urged people to take the disease seriously.

“Don’t overlook symptoms just because you don’t have a cough or shortness of breath. My father’s symptoms were digestive at first. My mom mainly lost her sense of taste and smell.”

According to data collected by the John Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, there are 368,533 confirmed cases in the U.S. as of Tuesday morning. The number of deaths is at 10,906.

“A week of picturing the strong man we called ‘Aba,’ connected to a ventilator in an Indianapolis ICU, was bad enough,” Kuperstein wrote. “But now we were forced to imagine life without him."

“And I can’t even hug my mom!”