09/11/2026
We will never forget.
(1/6) “When we arrived on the scene it was chaos. The second tower had just been hit. The sound of sirens was deafening and the air was filled with what looked like confetti. There was no command structure so everyone had to figure out what to do on their own. I paired up with Tommy Jurgens; we worked at the courthouse together and had come over on a jury bus. As we crossed over Vesey Street Tommy made the sign of the cross, and I did the same. We walked through a big wet spot which we didn’t realize at the time was human remains. The entrances to the towers were closed because of the jumpers, so we entered through Building Five and found a passageway leading to Tower Two. On our first trip we found a civilian with a head laceration and escorted them back to the triage center. On our second trip we did the same with someone who was clearly having a heart attack. On our third trip we came across two other court officers— Mitch and Harry. Mitch had run ten blocks from the Canal Street Subway station. Harry had come over from the Court Officer Academy. He was a captain, a real spit-and-polish guy. I looked up to him; I’d taken a few of his classes at the academy. So when he joined us I felt a sense of calm, like: ‘OK, everything’s going to be alright.’ We pushed our way to a shopping mall area beneath Tower Two, and that’s where we found a badly burned young woman standing with her arms extended. Her hair was singed. Her pink top had melted to her body. She told me her name but I immediately forgot, and it would be almost a year until I heard it again. She was clearly in critical condition, so I told Tommy, Mitch, and Harry that I would take her back to the triage center. They continued ahead to find other victims while I strapped her into a stair chair and began pushing her back the way we came. We probably made it 100 feet when someone screamed behind us: ‘Get Down!’ Then there was a horrible sound. You know the rumbling and screeching sound that a subway makes when it takes a sharp turn? It was a combination of that, and explosions.”
