Airplane Debris Found Near World Trade Center Site

Land surveyors working just north of the former World Trade Center site have discovered a piece of an airplane’s landing gear, apparently from one of the two planes that crashed into the twin towers more than 11 years ago, the police said on Friday.

A part of a landing gear, apparently from one of the airplanes that crashed on Sept. 11, 2001, was found on Wednesday in Lower Manhattan.

The landing gear part was found on Wednesday in a narrow space between two buildings, 51 Park Place and 50 Murray Street, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, Paul J. Browne, said in a statement.

The police were treating the area as a crime scene, Mr. Browne said. It is possible that the medical examiner’s office will decide to sift through the soil there in search of human remains, he said.

The surveyors, working for a property owner in the area, were inspecting the rear of 51 Park Place when they found the piece.

On Sept. 11, 2001, the landing gear assembly of one of the planes crashed through the roof of 45-47 Park Place, at the time a Burlington Coat Factory.

Park Place is about three blocks north of the World Trade Center site, and 51 Park Place was part of a plan by a developer to create a mosque and community center.

The landing gear component is about 3 feet high, 3 feet wide and about 18 inches deep, Mr. Browne said. It was wedged between the two buildings, where it remained “out of sight and out of mind for over a decade,” he said.

“The odds of it entering that space at exactly that angle that would permit it to squeeze in there,” he added, “it had to come in at almost precisely the right angle to end up being wedged there.”

He said investigators were working under the assumption that the piece was “a portion of the landing gear of one of the two planes destroyed on 9/11.”

He noted that the artifact bore a Boeing serial number and that personnel from the Police Department’s aviation unit had identified it as part of a landing gear. He also noted that it was found near where other wreckage from the jetliners were discovered shortly after the attacks.

Friday 26 April 2013

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/27/nyregion/airplane-debris-found-near-world-trade-center-site.html?_r=0