9/11 ID: GRIEF & RELIEF
Closure for kin
The remains of a 26-yearold World Trade Center financial worker killed 17 years ago on 9/11 have been identified by the city’s Medical Examiner’s Office.
The agency said the remains are those of Scott Michael Johnson, who worked on the 89th floor of the South Tower as a securities analyst for Keefe, Bruyette & Woods.
Johnson (inset) is the 1,642nd person to be identified of the 2,753 killed in the terror attacks on the towers.
He is also the first victim to be identified since August 2017.
“In 2001, we made a commitment to the families of victims that we would do whatever it takes, for as long as it takes, to identify their loved ones,” Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Barbara Sampson said in a written statment.
“This identification is the result of the tireless dedication of our staff to this ongoing mission.”
A team of experts at the ME’s Office had tried to identify a bone fragment recovered from the rubble at least a dozen times since 2001, without success.
“As a forensic scientist, you’re trained to be neutral and unbiased,” Mark Desire, the assistant director of forensic biology at the ME’s Office, told The New York Times.
“But with the World Trade Center investigation, it’s a different kind of case, and when you meet with the families and the hugs and the thank-yous, it gets emotional.”
Using new techniques, the team was able to remove some DNA from the bone fragment, run it through a database containing 17,000 reference samples from victims and family members, and make a positive identification.
For Johnson’s family, the the official identification has brought closure to a long and agonizing wait.
“You get pulled right back into it and it also means there’s a finality,” Michael’s mother, Ann Johnson, told the Times. “Somehow, I always thought he would just walk up and say, ‘Here I am. I had amnesia.’
“Having said that, it’s also made me cry.”
She and her husband, Tom, who have two other children, said they’re not planning any services now that Scott has been identified.