As America marks 22 years since the 9/11 attacks, the identities of two more victims from the World Trade Center have been identified through DNA testing. The names of the two victims are being withheld at the request of their families, ABC News reports. They are the 1,648th and 1,649th victims identified out of 2,753 killed in the attack. The unidentified remains of more than 1,000 victims are being stored at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum at the World Trade Center site, where a memorial was held Monday morning.
Advances in DNA technology have helped authorities identify remains, but these are the first positive identifications announced by New York City's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner since September 2021, NBC New York reports. Though the pace of identifications has slowed down, Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Jason Graham vowed that the effort will continue. "Faced with the largest and most complex forensic investigation in the history of our country, we stand undaunted in our mission to use the latest advances in science to serve this promise," he said.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams said that as the city marks the anniversary of the attack, "our thoughts turn to those we lost on that terrible morning and their families who continue to live every day with the pain of missing loved ones." "We hope these new identifications can bring some measure of comfort to the families of these victims, and the ongoing efforts by the Office of Chief Medical Examiner attest to the city's unwavering commitment to reunite all the World Trade Center victims with their loved ones," the mayor said. (One 911 memorial is in an unexpected place: Ireland.)