I've been waiting for this story. This is courage.
in.news.yahoo.com
Thursday September 13, 11:23 PM
Wife tells of husband's attempt to stop hijackers
By Sue Pleming
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Aware the hijackers on his plane were on a suicide mission, Thomas Burnett spoke four times to his wife before the aircraft crashed in Pennsylvania, desperate to come up with a plan to thwart his captors.
Petrified her husband would draw the attention of the hijackers, Deena Burnett said on Thursday she pleaded with him to keep a low profile, praying he would not meet the same fate as those on planes that hit the World Trade Centre.
But Burnett, the chief operating officer of a medical device company, was determined to act, his wife told Reuters.
Along with several passengers near the cockpit, Burnett is believed to have made a valiant attempt to prevent kamikaze pilots from their goal of hitting another landmark.
"I told him I loved him and to please sit down and not draw attention to himself. He said: 'no. If they are going to take the plane down then we are going to have to do something'," said Mrs. Burnett from her home in San Ramon, California.
"His last words were: 'a group of us are going to do something'," added Burnett. She never heard from him again and his plane crashed in a wooded area near a strip mine about 80 miles (130 km) from Pittsburgh.
Mrs. Burnett's account tallies with those given by others who had relatives on board the only flight that hijackers did not manage to steer into a landmark building in orchestrated attacks against U.S. symbols of financial and military power.
It was not immediately known what target Burnett's flight was headed for. The U.S. military has vigorously denied shooting down his plane, United Airlines Flight 93 which crashed with 45 people on board. But the FBI has not yet ruled that out, FBI agent Bill Crowley told reporters near the crash site.
Burnett, described by his wife as "the kind of guy who would never give up in any situation," was on his way home from meetings in New York and had boarded United Airlines Flight 93 from Newark to San Francisco.
Deena Burnett was drinking her first cup of coffee of the day when she turned on the news to see two planes had crashed into the World Trade Centre in New York.
"My first thought was Tom's in New York. Could that be Tom? Then the phone rang and it was him and I was so relieved to hear him. I asked him if he was ok and he said 'no'," said Mrs. Burnett.
'HE WAS VERY COMPOSED'
He told his wife to call the authorities to tell them hijackers had commandeered their plane, a passenger had been knifed and the attackers claimed they had a bomb on board.
"He was very composed. I could tell that his adrenaline was going. He was speaking quickly but quietly, not whispering but not yelling," said Burnett.
"I asked him no questions that time and was so afraid for him to be using his phone. I called 911 and was connected to the FBI."
Her husband called a few minutes later, while she was talking to the FBI, and told her the hijackers were talking about running the plane into the ground.
"I told him all about the World Trade Centre. He was very concerned and started asking me questions. I gave him all the information I could and then he said he had to go and hung up.
"Once I told him about the World Trade Centre, I know that he realised at that point this could be a suicide mission for the hijackers. ... He realised this was all connected."
She added: "I could tell that he was formulating a plan. He was pumping me for information, pertaining to information about what I knew about the World Trade Centre, asking if it was a commercial airline or any information I might have to help him understand what kind of a situation he was in."
In their third phone call, the couple discussed the probability of a bomb being on board, deciding that the hijackers were probably lying about it.
"I used to be a flight attendant and we were trained for hijacking and so that's why he would have asked me that."
Mrs. Burnett said her husband did not describe the hijackers and that she was too afraid to ask him for details.
In their final, fourth telephone call in a 45-minute period, Mrs. Burnett got the impression her husband was going to take action along with others in the first class compartment, near the pilot's cabin.
"Then he hung up and he never called me back," she said softly, as her young children urged her to get off the phone to help get them ready for school. |
