Human bones and tissue found at a building near the World Trade Center site this week are believed to be from a victim of the terrorist attack two years ago.
Nine pieces, mostly bone and some tissue, were discovered Monday afternoon by workers helping repair the 25-story landmark built in 1907, which was heavily damaged by trade center debris and has been closed since the disaster. The building is located about a block from where the south tower stood.
Ellen Borakove, a spokeswoman for the city medical examiner, said Tuesday that the remains were assigned a trade center case number, and are believed to have come from a person or people who died in the attack.
The jetliner crashes and subsequent collapses of the 110-story towers blew debris and human remains throughout the area. Aircraft parts were found blocks away. Part of a stairwell from the south tower landed on the roof of the same building where remains were found Monday. A woman’s pelvic bone was found there a year ago.
After the attacks, authorities combed the rooftops of nearby buildings for human remains, but some of the condemned structures closest to the site could not be as thoroughly searched.
Port Authority Police Lt. John Ryan, who oversaw the trade center remains recovery, said the building was searched “very thoroughly” but added he was not surprised that bones have been found two years later.
“It was a very difficult building to search,” Ryan said. “A lot of the floors were burned out, it was an older building and there were a lot of places where debris could be.”
City officials say 2,792 people were lost in the attack; about 55 percent have been identified, most by DNA. The majority of the nearly 20,000 pieces recovered did not initially yield readable DNA results because of damage from heat, humidity and degradation over time.
After the excavation of the 16-acre site ended in June 2002, firefighters and police searched for human remains in several of the nearby buildings, and found bone fragments, teeth and even parts of an airplane luggage rack.