Two more victims identified

THOUGH many of their names appear on memorials across the nation, 40% of those who died in the September 11 terrorist attack at the World Trade Centre – more than 1 000 people – have never been officially identified.

They are gone. Their families probably know. But their DNA has not been matched to any of the remains found at Ground Zero or beyond.

As America approaches a sombre 20th anniversary of the tragedy, the New York City Office of the Chief Medical Examiner announced on Tuesday that it has formally identified two more people who were killed that day. Researchers are hopeful that the new techniques used to identify those two will help them make progress in the remaining cases.

The last identifications made before the ones announced on Tuesday were in October 2019; the pace slowed to a crawl after the hundreds of identifications in the few years after 2001. New, more sensitive DNA sequencing technology now “promises to result in more new identifications,” the medical examiner's office said in a statement.

Dorothy Morgan of Hempstead,

New York, is the 1 646th person to be identified. The family of the other person identified requested his name be withheld, according to the medical examiner's office.

Morgan's daughter, Nykiah Morgan, told NBC New York that though she had recognised her mother was gone, she was shocked to hear officials had identified her remains.

Some part of her hadn't let go of the possibility of her mother still being out there somewhere, she told the station.

“Maybe she had amnesia. Maybe she’s out living a whole different life, and she’s happy,” she said.

Dorothy Morgan worked for Marsh &

Mclennan, an insurance company, and would have been 67 this year. Her name is etched on the 9/11 memorial in New York City.

Her identity was confirmed after testing remains that were recovered in 2001. The unnamed man’s identity was confirmed through testing remains recovered across several years: 2001, 2002 and 2006, the medical examiner’s office said.

All remains have been tested at this point, and scientists are now doing the tedious work of re-examining remaining bone fragments using new, pioneering technology.

“We continue to push the science out of necessity to make more identifications,” said Mark Desire, manager of the World Trade Centre DNA Identification Team, which is part of the medical examiner's office, in a statement. “The commitment today is as strong as it was in 2001.”

Next generation sequencing, which is also used by the US military, is now being employed to help verify more World

Trade Centre victims. Researchers said this method allows them to test samples previously considered too far degraded to be useful.

Initially, scientists had more than 22 000 remains to examine, ranging from more complete bodies to tiny fragments of bone. Victims’ families provided about 17 000 reference DNA samples for comparison, officials said, including toothbrushes, razors and saliva samples from children and siblings.

Researchers said at a Wednesday news conference that they have about 30 sets of remains with DNA profiles that do not match any of those reference samples.

“At this present time, we have no way of identifying those individuals,” said DNA scientist and lab supervisor Carl Gajewski. | The Washington Post