Last Flight 587 Remains Laid to Rest
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NEW YORK (AP) – The last remains of those who died in the 2001 crash of American Airlines Flight 587 have been placed in two Bronx crypts, officials said Saturday.
Families of the 265 victims of the flight bound for the Dominican Republic have been invited to a Sunday dedication ceremony at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, said Susan Olsen, a cemetery official. The ceremony was scheduled for 1 p.m.
Ms. Olsen said the remains were entombed on Friday in granite and marble crypts in the cemetery’s Garden Conservatory Mausoleum.
Officials placed 889 fragments that either were unidentified or identified but never claimed in four caskets. All 265 victims of the 2001 crash have been identified by their bodies or at least some remains, said Ellen Borakove, spokeswoman for the medical examiner.
She said that to her knowledge, these remains were the last from Flight 587. Initially, the city recovered a total of 2,058 remains. Of the 889 pieces placed in the crypts, 308 could not be identified.
The cemetery space had been purchased by New York City, which for years has been trying to solve the issue of where the final remains should rest.
Flight 587 crashed in the quiet neighborhood of Belle Harbor, Queens, after taking off from John F. Kennedy International Airport. Many of the victims were Dominican-born New York residents on their way to visit their native land.
The Nov. 12, 2001, crash killed 260 people on board and five people on the ground, further rattling a city still shaken by the attacks on the World Trade Center just two months earlier.
The National Transportation Safety Board determined the tail of the Airbus A300 had fallen off, and the agency blamed pilot error, inadequate pilot training and overly sensitive rudder controls.
In November, on the fifth anniversary of the crash, Mayor Michael Bloomberg dedicated a memorial wall bearing the victims’ names. Overlooking the ocean about 15 blocks away from the crash site, the $9.2 million memorial was designed by Dominican Republic native Freddy Rodriguez and funded with private and public money.
