Diane Horning, President of WTC Families for Proper Burial, talked to HuffPost Live Friday about when New York City accidentally gave her family a set of human remains not belonging to her son, Matthew.
Despite the mistake, Horning commended the medical examiner’s office for identifying the error and making the effort to inform her.
“As horrible as that [mistake] was for me, it was commendable that the medical examiner’s office would make that public, and would tell me,” Horning said. “It would’ve been very easy for them to say, ‘No one will ever know, and let’s skip over it,’ but they didn’t. They wanted the person that really was the relative of this victim to have the remains.”
New York City is still sifting through 60 dump truck loads of World Trade Center debris for remains of 9/11 attack victims.
New York City officials restarted the search on Monday, April 1. As of Thursday, they had discovered 51 fragments that may possibly be human remains.
Horning was joined on HuffPost Live Friday by Mary Fetchet, the Founding Director of Voices of September 11th, and Dr. Yuval Neria, Professor of Clinical Psychology & Director of Trauma and PTSD Program at Columbia University. Watch the full segment here.