i'm hearing 3 passengers on the 4th plane may have taken it down...
from san fran chron...
>>Seconds before his San Francisco-bound plane went down, Thomas Burnett of San
Ramon phoned his wife, telling her the flight was doomed but that he and two
other passengers were determined to "do something about it."
"I love you, honey," were Burnett's last words to his wife, Deena, before
United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in western Pennsylvania with 45 people
aboard, the last of four closely timed terror attacks across the country.
No one knows what happened in the moments before the flight went down at 10
a.m. local time, and authorities would not speculate on whether the efforts of
anyone on board kept Flight 93 from joining the jets that slammed into such
symbolic targets as the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.
But it was apparent that Burnett and at least two other passengers were aware
of their predicament and trying to get word to the world below.
Burnett, 38, was a father of three and chief operating officer for Thoratec
Corp., a Pleasanton company that deals in medical devices. He used his phone to
tell his wife that a passenger had already been killed after the plane took off
from Newark, N.J.
"She was talking to him on the phone," said the Rev. Frank Colacicco of St.
Isidore's Catholic Church in Danville, where the family worships. "He said one
of the passengers was stabbed.
"He said, 'I know we're all going to die -- there's three of us who are going
to do something about it,' " Colacicco said. "He then said, 'I love you,
honey,' and that was the end of conversation."
The FBI interviewed Deena Burnett, 37, about her husband's call. Later,
Colacicco said he did what he could to comfort her. The church held a prayer
vigil for Thomas Burnett and the family last night.
"He gave his life for others," Colacicco said. "He thought he would be able to
do that.
"I was there to comfort her," he said. "She did say this: He always believed
that God gave us the choice for evil or good, and she figured that he figured
that these people were doing evil instead of good -- that was his philosophy of
life."
Others aboard Flight 93 made calls as hijackers took over the plane. One man
apparently went into the bathroom, locked the door and called 911.
"We are being hijacked, we are being hijacked!" the man said, stressing that
the call was not a hoax.
The passenger said he had heard an explosion and seen white smoke pouring from
the plane just before contact with the ground was cut off.
Dan Stevens, spokesman for the Westmoreland County (Pa.) Department of Public
Safety, said the county had given a tape of the one-minute call to the FBI.
Saying he feared jeopardizing the FBI's investigation, Stevens declined to
reveal anything else the caller said.
"It was treated as a serious call," he said.
Also on the flight was San Francisco public relations executive Mark Bingham,
who called his mother, Alice Hoglan, from the air phone in the seat in front of
him less than half an hour before the jet crashed.
Hoglan, 51, herself a United Airlines flight attendant, said her son told her
that three men who claimed to have a bomb had hijacked the plane.
Bingham, 31, told a family friend who picked up the phone to "get Kathy (his
aunt) or Alice quick," Hoglan said. Kathy got on the line first.
"This is Mark, I want you to know I love you," Bingham began, his mother said.
"I'm on United Flight 93 -- we have been taken over by hijackers."
Hoglan then got on the line. "Mom, this is Mark Bingham," he told her, said
Hoglan, adding that her son sounded flustered.
"I just want you know I love you. I'm on a flight from Newark to San Francisco,
and the plane's been taken over by three guys who say they have a bomb."
Hoglan said she could tell there was confusion, but she couldn't hear much
more.
"Who are these guys?" Hoglan wanted to know.
"Yes, it's true," her son replied.
"I believe you, I believe you," she said. "Then there was some pause, the phone
was alive for a couple seconds, then it went dead."
Hoglan said her son was flying on a pass from his sister, who is also a flight
attendant.
"He was wonderful," she said. "He had friends who were Islamic, friends who
were Jewish. He was just a man of the world. This house is full of his friends
here now.
"We loved him very much," Hoglan said. "He was just the light in our lives.
"I'm very proud he was my son." <<
and you should be... |
