DAYTON — As the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks approaches, retired FBI Special Agent Kenneth Wall recalled his deployment to Pennsylvania on the day of the tragedy.
Wall, who has more than 30 years of law enforcement and military experience, was working as a supervisory special agent in Dayton, Ohio, when the attacks occurred.
[DOWNLOAD: Free WHIO-TV News app for alerts as news breaks]
TRENDING STORIES:
- Suspect accused of stealing vape products from Sidney drive-thru; Do you recognize them?
- Pilot identified after being injured when plane crashes in Miami County
- Lebanon City Council pauses use of all 20 Flock Safety cameras
Nearly 3,000 people lost their lives when hijackers flew four commercial airplanes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania. At the time, Wall was stationed at the Dayton RA, an office of the FBI Cincinnati field office.
He was at the hospital with his wife and two-month-old son, who had just undergone surgery, when he watched the first plane strike the World Trade Center on television.
When Wall saw the televised news coverage, he told his wife he anticipated receiving response orders. “Told my wife, we’re in the hospital, like I’m going to be deployed. I know something’s going to happen,” Wall said.
He headed straight to the Dayton office. “By the time I got back to the office, things transpired. We knew what happened at Shanksville and got the call to deploy,” Wall said.
United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in Shanksville after passengers and crew fought back against hijackers to prevent the plane from hitting its intended target in Washington, D.C.
Upon arrival at the crash site, recovery teams focused on gathering evidence and searching for victims’ belongings.
“Our mission was to look for evidence number one. Two, body movement, range recovery, and then personal effects recovery. So we wanted to give something to the victim’s families, you know, back to them that they could get some sort of closure,” Wall said.
Recovery operations paused at the crash site to allow victims’ family members to visit the location. “All of the family members brought memorials and pictures of their loved ones, so we were dealing with stuff on the ground, and now it became really personal. So that made that much more difficult to kind of personalize it,” Wall said.
After spending several weeks in Shanksville, Wall deployed to the World Trade Center site to assist with debris sorting at Fresh Kills.
“That was another hard part, going to Fresh Kills because we’re working with the fire department on the scene. So they lost friends, brothers, and sisters, so that made it very difficult,” Wall said.
[SIGN UP: WHIO-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter]