Snake’s head dead?
TWO MORE first responders have died of 9/11-related cancers, officials said Friday.
Retired FDNY Firefighter and Brooklyn native William Gormley, 53, died following a short battle with lung cancer Wednesday, his family said.
A day earlier, retired NYPD Detective William Kinane, 60, of Breezy Point, Queens, died of a 9/11-related illness.
The two deaths threatened to overwhelm the Marine Park Funeral Home — which serves both Marine Park and the Rockaways — so Gormley’s family was asked to move the service to another location, family members said.
“This is crazy,” said Gormley’s brother James Gormley, 47, shocked that 16 years later so many people were dying because of 9/11.
“We were supposed to go to the Marine Park Funeral Home, but there was a police officer there that also died of 9/11-related illness. So we had to move.”
The Gormley family moved services to the McManus Funeral Home, his brother said. His wake will begin Monday. “We grew up in Flatlands, so I guess it’s fitting,” he said of the new location.
“He is the best man I ever knew in my life. Everything that’s good in me I got from him.”
After a stint in the Marines, Gormley joined the FDNY in 1988. He spent the bulk of his career at Ladder Company 174 in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, until his retirement in 2006.
“He was one of the bravest men I had the pleasure of working with,” said Firefighter Lenny Stromstedt, who in February went skiing with Gormley at the retiree’s new home in Vermont.
“He was just a phenomenal man and one of the funniest motherf------ I ever met.”
Gormley is survived by his wife Lizanne and four children.
Kinane was also surrounded by his wife Maura and daughters Katie and Bridget-Anne when he died. Reached Friday, Maura Kinane said she was too distraught to comment.
Since the terror attacks on the World Trade Center in which 343 firefighters and 23 NYPD cops were killed, an additional157 firefighters have died of 9/11-related illnesses, officials said.
By the end of 2016, 132 additional NYPD cops had died of illnesses that can be linked to their time at Ground Zero, officials said. BEIRUT — Uncertainty and confusion surrounded the fate of the head of the Islamic State group Friday as Russia announced it may have killed him in an air strike targeting a meeting of ISIS leaders outside the group’s selfdeclared capital in Syria, but U.S. officials said there was no definitive proof of his death.
The demise of Abu Bakr alBaghdadi would be a severe blow to the extremist group as it fights to hang on to its strongholds in Syria and Iraq. Apart from Moscow’s claim that he may have been killed in a May 28 air strike along with more than 300 militants, there was not much else to back it up.