Moira Smith Wiki – Moira Smith Biography
Moira Smith was the only female New York police officer to die on September 11, 2001. Twenty years after the terrorist attack, the men she helped save and the husband she left behind remember her heroism. An iconic photograph taken that day showed Smith helping a bloody and battered Ed Nicholls out of the World Trade Center.
She was one of the few people to make it out of the South Tower Sky Lobby alive. She grabbed me and helped me get to this area, just to sit on the sidewalk and wait for an ambulance, ”Nicholls recalled. After that photograph, Smith entered the World Trade Center to help as many people as she could. Martin Glynn met her at the Plaza Level. “She was barking instructions. “Don’t look! Don’t look! Keep moving, don’t use your cell phone. Keep moving! ‘” He said she.
NYPD cop recounts wife’s heroic 9/11 sacrifice
A former NYPD cop recounted how he saw the World Trade Center collapse on September 11 while driving to the scene, only to later realize his wife was inside.
Moira Smith was the only female police officer to lose her life on that fateful day. She left for work early that morning after kissing her husband Jim and her daughter Patricia, who was two at the time, goodbye. After the first plane hit one of the towers, Smith responded to the scene as quickly as possible. She was reportedly helping a woman suffering from an asthma attack on the third floor of the South Tower when she collapsed.
Jim, who was also a cop at the time, was on his way to New York when he saw the tower fall. “It was just before the downtown tunnel that I saw the first building collapse,” the retired police officer, now 60, told The Sun. “I was in the car that was crossing the bridge and I saw it. I got to the precinct, where Moira and I worked, I asked her where she was and they said, ‘Okay, she’s accounted for.’ But at that point, she was already under of the building “.
Moira, 38, was martyred after she ran into danger as others frantically tried to escape her. Her husband, however, said that she was not supposed to be there. “On September 11, Moira was supposed to be on election shift, but she changed and was working on a labor dispute demonstration,” Jim recalled. “She came in at 5 am, she kissed the baby, she kissed me and left. she working at the demonstration when she saw the impact of the first plane. Moira called work, grabbed a couple of witnesses, and took them back to the police station to be interviewed. I think she was the first person to call that day. ”
As soon as she was alerted to the tragic news, Moira chose a handful of her colleagues and headed downtown toward the burning towers. She tried to call Jim at home, but tragically missed that call. “I was with our daughter Patricia and we were watching a video,” she said. “She was downstairs when the phone rang, apparently it was Moira trying to contact me. When I got there, she had hung up.”
Moira and the other officers ran towards the South Tower, which was the second to be hit by the planes and the first to collapse. “Moira was directing people, pulling them out and moving them around the lobby. If there were people with more serious injuries, she would take them out, “Jim said.” Someone came downstairs and said there was a woman on the third floor who had an asthma attack and needed help. Moira came up to help her, and that’s when the building collapsed. ”
Jim worked for hours in the grim scene of 9/11, believing that Moira was safe somewhere. His sister, however, kept calling him to ask if he had heard from his wife, especially since Moira hadn’t called to see how little Patricia was doing.
She “she was carrying supplies to Ground Zero officers. Then finally, around 3 am, a group of officers asked me if I knew where Moira was, “Jim recalled.” It was like, ‘You’ve been telling me all day that you know where she is, and now you don’t know where she is? “We were checking the hospitals. We started digging. That took a long time. Friends of mine drove to help me search. There was no one in charge, no equipment or anything. They were digging by hand. It was all bits of rock and dust.”
It wasn’t long before Jim realized that his beloved wife was gone. Jim retired from the NYPD after 9/11 to care for his daughter full time. He still lives in New York and has since remarried his wife Christine, with whom he has children James, 13, and Christopher, 10. However, he told The Sun how anti-police sentiment fueled by The protests of Black Lives Matter did not sit well with him. with the.
“What disgusts me is that people said, ‘Never forget, never forget, never forget.’ By the way, do they treat cops from all over the country now? They forgot, “Jim commented.” When someone told Moira that there was a woman on the third floor who had an asthma attack, she didn’t say, ‘Wait, what color is she?’ He went up there and lost his life trying. to save that person. That’s what the police do every day, “he explained.
Moira now has a playground in Madison Square Park named after her. “That was part of where she was patrolling,” Jim explained. “As my daughter says, it is a place where children can be safe and Moira can take care of them.”