Cee Cee Lyles See Your Faces Again
It began with a muted serial of thumps from a sharp pocketknife or maybe clenched fists. The sounds were muffled merely unmistakable, one body blow after another, catastrophe with a squishy thud.
"No, no, no, no, no. No," came the high-pitched voice of a crew member or flight attendant being subdued. " . . . Please, please don't injure me," the person said later on. " . . . I don't desire to die." The desperate plea, captured by the cockpit voice recorder of United Airlines Flight 93 on Sept. 11, 2001, was played to a transfixed jury yesterday at the capital punishment trial of Zacarias Moussaoui.
A foreign-accented vocalisation, increasingly agitated, screamed: "Downwardly. Downwardly. Down!" as the whacking sound continued. Then there was silence. "That'south it. Become dorsum," a hijacker said calmly. "Everything is fine. I finished."
And with that, Flight 93 from Newark banked left toward Washington. But the terrorists would not strike their target that day considering they were beaten -- as the vocalization recorder made clear -- past the passengers, who fought back. The 32-minute tape recounts an ballsy struggle as passengers surged forward to retake the aeroplane using whatever low-tech weapons they could discover.
"Allow's get them!" 1 passenger yelled as dishes crashed to the floor. "In the cockpit. If we don't we'll die," screamed another amongst more thumping and crashing and breaking of glass.
Yesterday, the myth of Flying 93 became real. The 33 passengers and seven coiffure members have been lionized in book and film for their struggle to retake the doomed jet, ane of 4 planes hijacked during the deadliest terrorist strike in U.S. history. Until now, the recording that documented their courage had been played but for federal investigators and a express number of relatives of those aboard.
Only in courtroom, Americans were taken inside a hijacking drama that saw in a space of time shorter than the boilerplate Washington commute terrorists seize a cockpit by savage force, repulse an initial attack by passengers and and so crash a jetliner in a Pennsylvania field equally their captives, throwing plates or annihilation else at their disposal, thwarted their plans.
Much of the tape is unintelligible. There was loud static, and the voices, some speaking English and others Arabic, were oftentimes inaudible. It cannot be determined whether the passengers entered the cockpit, although it is certain they came close and forced the hijackers to carelessness their assault on Washington.
The recording fabricated clear that a group of men and women, who knew the World Merchandise Center had been attacked, recognized that this was no conventional hijacking -- these terrorists were crashing planes into buildings -- and resolved to have command of their fate.
"There is admittedly no doubtfulness that through their heroic deportment however more carnage and catastrophe was prevented," said Richard Ben-Veniste, a member of the independent committee that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks. The commission concluded that the passengers of Flight 93 stopped an assault that was aimed at Washington, well-nigh likely the Capitol or White House.
The hijackers, as shown on a computer simulation played on monitors throughout the courtroom, jerked the aeroplane violently to the left and right during the struggle. They tried to cut off the oxygen equally passengers banged on the cockpit door. In the end, as the passengers were either in the cockpit or moments from entering information technology, the hijackers turned the airplane upside downward -- and crashed it.
"Allah is the greatest!" one screamed nine times equally the plane went down. The recording and so went expressionless. The courtroom was silent.
The trial seemed an afterthought yesterday amid the drama of the recording. Prosecutors rested their case for the execution of Moussaoui, the but person convicted in the United States in connectedness with the attacks on the trade heart and the Pentagon. The defence will now brainstorm its instance, and Moussaoui is expected to take the stand again as early every bit today.
In the trial's first phase, Moussaoui testified that he had planned to hijack a fifth plane and crash information technology into the White House on Sept. eleven with a crew that included shoe bomber Richard Reid. The jury constitute Moussaoui eligible for the death penalty and will decide whether he should be executed or spend his life in prison. Reid could testify before the jury gets the case.
D. Hamilton Peterson of Bethesda, president of Families of Flying 93, said the public airing of the recording should put to rest whatsoever lingering questions about what happened aboard the Boeing 757. "The paramount issue was, Did the passengers and coiffure thwart the airplane from its intended target? And that question has clearly been answered," said Peterson, whose father, Donald A. Peterson, and stepmother, Jean H. Peterson, died on the plane. "Whether or non they were actually into the cockpit or tearing the door off the hinges at the time it was scuttled is something history will accept to reply."
Prosecutors played the vocalization recorder tape every bit part of their endeavour to testify the jury the all-encompassing impairment acquired by Sept. 11 and the suffering and loss of the victims. More than than 35 survivors and family unit members testified in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, including Lorne Lyles, whose married woman, CeeCee, was a flying bellboy on Flight 93. He brought several jurors to the brink of tears with his testimony yesterday about his wife's ii calls from the plane.
The offset time the phone rang, Lyles, a Fort Myers, Fla., police officer who had worked the overnight shift, rolled over and went back to sleep. He did speak to his wife briefly when she called again. Just only a week afterward did he hear the message she had left on his voice mail.
"Hi, baby," CeeCee Lyles said in the call, a tape of which was played in courtroom yesterday. "Baby, you accept to listen to me very carefully. I'yard on a plane that's been hijacked. . . . I'm trying to exist at-home."
Saying she knew that planes had crashed into the World Trade Middle, Lyles tried to keep her sophistication, but her voice broke equally she ended the phone call. "I promise to be able to see your face once more, baby," she said. "I beloved y'all, baby."
Lyles said he has been in and out of counseling for the past five years. "I'thou just now being able to appreciate a full night's sleep," he testified. "They say closure, merely in that location's never whatsoever closure. It takes a piece of you."
Moussaoui looked bored, every bit he did when the cockpit voice recorder was played. Jurors leaned forward in their seats.
A large screen showed the path of Flight 93 and instrument readings of speed and distance as Ziad Jarrah, believed to be the hijacking team'southward pilot, started the recording past announcing: "Ladies and gentlemen: Here the captain, please sit downwardly keep remaining sitting. We have a bomb on board. So sit."
It was nearly 9:32 a.g., iv minutes afterwards investigators say the four hijackers started their attack. The plane had taken off from Newark Liberty International Airport, bound for San Francisco, at 8:42 a.yard.
The sounds of a struggle in the cockpit were immediately heard, just it was unclear whether the pleading vocalization was male or female. The Sept. 11 commission ended that a flight attendant, near probable a woman, struggled with hijackers in the cockpit and was killed or otherwise silenced. Hijackers on the four planes were armed with pocket-size knives and box cutters.
When the plane turned around and started heading south through Pennsylvania, there were several minutes of silence. At 9:43 a.m., it started descending speedily, leveled off, and so descended again. The start sign of a struggle came at 9:57 a.m., when a hijacker said: "Is in that location something? A fight?"
Passengers, who had made cellphone calls and learned of the earlier trade center assault, so rushed the cockpit. "They want to make it there. Hold, concord from the inside," a hijacker said.
"Shall we cease information technology off?" one hijacker asked.
"No, not yet," responded another. "When they all come, we finish information technology off."
Within seconds, there was clamor -- the sounds of a vehement, almost animalistic struggle. People yelled and objects crashed, which Sept. 11 commissioners say was probably the passengers hurling objects at the cockpit door or ramming it with a beverage cart.
"Down, downwards. Pull it downwards, pull information technology down," a hijacker said just before his colleague praised Allah and crashed the airplane.
In the background, a single phonation could exist heard screaming "No!"
Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2006/04/13/at-trial-flight-93-myth-finally-becomes-reality/d43ffeb5-b22e-4676-9647-313a04df42f5/
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