9/11 20 years later: 2 more World Trade Center victims finally identified

NEW YORK — After two decades, the work to identify all of the victims of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center is still not done. It is also still shining a light on the lives lost that day.

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The New York City Office of the Chief Medical Examiner announced that two more identities have been confirmed as those killed that fall morning.

Dorothy Morgan of Hempstead, New York, is the 1,646th person identified using DNA analysis on remains recovered from Ground Zero, NPR reported.

Morgan was an insurance broker who worked in the North Tower of the World Trade Center, The New York Times reported.

For more than 19 years, her daughter wasn’t able to bury her mother. But last month, Nykiah Morgan found out her mother was indeed lost that day.

“I didn’t know they were still attempting that after all these years, that it was something that was ongoing,” Nykiah Morgan told the Times. “At this point, what is it that you’re sifting through?”

Nykiah Morgan had submitted a DNA sample from her mother after the attacks. New technology that is being used to once again rescan 22,000 body parts trying to find who they belong to, finally produced a match to a tiny bone fragment, the Times reported.

Morgan’s remains were recovered in 2001.

A second person, a man whose name was not released at the request of his family, is the 1,647th person identified, NPR reported.

The man’s remains were found over three years — 2001, 2002 and 2006.

“Twenty years ago, we made a promise to the families of World Trade Center victims to do whatever it takes for a long as it takes to identify their loved ones, and with these two identifications, we continue to fulfill that sacred obligation,” Dr. Barbara A. Sampson, Chief Medical Examiner of the City of New York, told NPR.

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DNA is difficult to extract from remains that that been damaged and degraded in the rubble of the buildings for weeks or longer, the Times reported.

The remains are housed between two offices — one at the medical examiner’s headquarters in Midtown Manhattan and another in a special storage repository at the 9/11 Memorial Museum that is under the authority of the medical examiner.

Click here to read more about the process used to recover and test DNA.

The office now says that 2,753 people were killed when two planes were flown into the north and south tower of the World Trade Center.

It’s been two years since a victim’s remains have been identified, but there are more than 1,100 people that still don’t have a name connected to remains, NPR reported.

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