NYC medical examiner identifies two additional 9/11 victims days before 20th anniversary

New York City’s chief medical examiner announced Tuesday that her office had identified two additional victims in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, just days before the 20th anniversary. 

Chief Medical Examiner Barbara Sampson said in a press release that Dorothy Morgan of Hempstead, N.Y., and an unnamed man, whose identity is being withheld at the request of his family, were the latest confirmed victims from the disaster that took the lives of more than 2,700 people at the World Trade Center. 

The New York Times reported that Morgan, who disappeared into the rubble of the collapsed Twin Towers nearly 20 years ago, worked as an insurance broker in the World Trade Center. 

Nearly 3,000 people were killed in the 9/11 attacks, when terrorists hijacked planes and crashed them into the World Trace Center and the Pentagon. A fourth plane crashed in Pennsylvania.

Sampson, whose office has been conducting DNA testing of remains recovered since the 2001 attacks, said the latest individuals bring the total number of victims identified through DNA analysis following the attacks to 1,647. 

“Twenty years ago, we made a promise to the families of World Trade Center victims to do whatever it takes for as long as it takes to identify their loved ones, and with these two new identifications, we continue to fulfill that sacred obligation,” Sampson said in a statement Tuesday. 

“No matter how much time passes since September 11, 2001, we will never forget, and we pledge to use all the tools at our disposal to make sure all those who were lost can be reunited with their families,” she added. 

Sampson said that the two latest identified victims are the first new ones confirmed since October 2019, with 1,106 victims, or roughly 40 percent, still unidentified. 

The medical examiner’s office said it hopes to identify even more of those who died at the World Trade Center through the recent adoption of updated sequencing technology that has been used by the U.S. military to identify remains of missing U.S. service members. 

Mark Desire, assistant director of the office’s Department of Forensic Biology and manager of the World Trade Center DNA Identification Team, said in a statement that researchers “continue to push the science out of necessity to make more identifications.” 

“The commitment today is as strong as it was in 2001,” he added. 

President Biden and first lady Jill Biden are scheduled to visit all three sites where attacks occurred to commemorate the anniversary, with Vice President Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff set to travel to the sites of the crashes in Shanksville, Pa., and the Pentagon in Arlington, Va.