Victim from World Trade Center Terrorist Attack Identified through Forensic Anthropology, DNA
- Details
- Category: World News
- Published on Tuesday, 08 August 2017 07:52
- Written by Janet Walker
The remains of a victim from the 9/11 Terrorist Attack has been identified sixteen years later through the forensic science and DNA bringing the total to those who died as a direct cause of the World Trade Center attacks to 2,753.
The victim, whose family has requested his name withheld, was identified through painstaking work matching bone fragments and DNA samples.
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As forensic sciences advance and technology more sensitive to results the means to process and positively identify the remaining victims while still a painstaking meticulous process becomes less of a challenge
At the time of the attacks, the medical examiner collected more than 10,000 unidentified bone and tissue fragments that have yet to be matched to the list of dead and missing. Bone fragments were also found in 2006 after the demolition of the Duetsche Bank building directly adjacent to the former World Trade Center site.
In 2010, an additional 72 more human remains were found at Fresh Kills Landfill which prompted officials to bring in forensic archaeologists and anthropologists from the Office of the Medical Examiner and other agencies, to search the Landfill, which was used as a processing center for the massive amounts of stone, rubble, and debris from Ground Zero.
After these teams tenaciously sifted and searched through the two million tons of concrete, steel, and ruins from the World Trade Center buildings that were brought to the once closed landfill, teams found more than 1600 personal effects.
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The federal, state and local judicial teams including federal agents, detectives and scientists, also searched the Fresh Kills site logging in nearly 1.7million man hours attempting to bring closure to families and loved ones who were still waiting.
After these exhaustive search a total of 4, 257 bone, tissue and other human remains were found.
A general belief is that even after the painstaking search, by three separate teams, combing through concrete, ruins, and wreckage is that human remains were potentially missed.
Official total state 2,996, including the 19 hijackers and occupants of each of the planes used, died with our August 7, 2017 victim bringing the total to 2,997. More than 6,000 were injured. It’s quite possible that one day with the advances of forensic sciences and more importantly advances in the technology that reads the results, all victims from all the human remains found will be positively identified.
Of the more than four thousand remains found at Fresh Kills, which contained only one-third of the World Trade Center debris, only 300 were positively identified.
