Worldandnation: Stores beneath trade center looted

Stores beneath trade center looted

©New York Times

NEW YORK -- Shops and restaurants in the retail concourse beneath 5 World Trade Center were looted after last week's disaster, and police are investigating whether rescue workers were responsible, law enforcement officials said Thursday.

The looting, which a New York National Guard infantry unit discovered, appears to have begun last week and continued less aggressively Tuesday night or early Wednesday of this week, said Capt. Vincent J. Heintz, commander of Company C, 1st Battalion, 105th Light Infantry.

"There have been people down here trying to steal from a mass grave," Heintz said. "They are grave robbers."

The Guard soldiers expressed disgust that someone had swept through not to free trapped people or recover remains, but to steal.

"Whoever did this should pay the penalty," said Spc. Kiron A. Ahamad, 25, of the Woodhaven section of Queens. "They should be down here giving a helping hand, not helping themselves."

A warren of wide subterranean passageways in 5 World Trade Center, on the northeast corner of the plaza, survived the collapses of the twin towers Sept. 11. One level below ground, many retail stores and restaurants, as well as the subway stop there, are intact.

Together the passageways and shops form a lightless world of ash, shards of glass and crumpled ceilings, interspersed with scenes of an ordinary New York City morning interrupted by tragedy. Several officers and soldiers who entered the basement said the thieves who swept through had acted as if they were raiding a tomb.

The looters picked through a Tourneau boutique watch store, raided cases of designer sunglasses in another shop, attempted to pry open at least one cash register and penetrated the service room behind a row of Chase ATM machines, where steel safes appeared to have dissuaded them from making off with stacks of cash.

Early this week the Guard reported the crimes to the police and Robert M. Morgenthau, the Manhattan district attorney. Police investigators and union officials toured the concourse Wednesday night, and Daniel Castleman, chief of the district attorney's Investigations Division, said he spoke with police officials to express concern about security at the site.

Last Thursday, two men -- including a corrections officer charged with posing as a police officer -- were arrested on charges of stealing two watches valued at a combined $3,700 at the Tourneau shop, Castleman said.

It was not clear Thursday night whether the two men had been participating as rescue workers.

But Guard officials noted that it was virtually impossible for civilians to reach the underground area, which is at the center of rings of security, immersed in darkness and cluttered at many points with hanging or leaning rubble.

And they said they had little doubt that the thefts were conducted by people familiar with the ground and equipped to carry out the crimes with speed and confidence. "It was calculated," said 2nd Lt. Peter Fluker, Company C's second platoon leader. "It was done with crowbars and heavy equipment and some sharp, blunt objects that were used to smash open big doors and jewelry cases. They were rescue workers of some sort."

Castleman stressed Thursday that the looting in the last week appeared limited to a few shops under one building. "It's not a situation of everyone walking in and stuffing their pockets," Castleman said. "It could be one guy who was very determined, and got his hands on some merchandise. At this point we don't have evidence of who it was, when it was or precisely what was taken."

Deputy Commissioner Thomas Antenen, a police spokesman, said the department was investigating.

In addition to the retail establishments that were looted, other shops and newsstands were partially destroyed by collapses, and it was not clear Thursday if the scattered merchandise and open cash boxes inside indicated more looting or simple disarray. "In some places, you just can't tell," said 1st Sgt. John Brett, who spent several watches on security duty in the dark basement, waiting in ambush with night vision equipment, hoping to catch returning thieves.

The scenes surrounding him were bizarre.

At the northeast corner of 5 World Trade Center is the remains of a Borders bookstore with many of its windows blown out. Above it sits the blackened and twisted frame of the buildings, through which water drips onto the cases of bestsellers. Only a few book cases are knocked over. All are coated with dust.

An idled escalator leads down to the darkened basement, which has become an unsettling tableau of New York City at the moment that the destruction began. A walk through Borders basement, past the travel section and a customer service counter, leads out to the main concourse, where untold numbers of commuters and shoppers mingled at the moment the first jetliner slammed into the complex.

The concourse is a world stopped in time.

Inside Sunglass Hut International, an employee's breakfast -- three link sausages and a moldy pile of eggs with a fork standing upright -- rests on the counter beside the cash register. The newsstands still hold stacks of the papers from the morning of the attack. At the entrance to the Warner Bros. store, the plastic statues of cartoon characters -- Bugs Bunny, the Tasmanian Devil -- stand wide-eyed in the blackness, their faces leering as the beam of a flashlight swings by.

At the Chase ATM booth, a customer's receipt -- for a $100 withdrawal made at 8:51 a.m. on Sept. 11 -- was protruding from the receipt slot. Heinz removed it, blew off the glass fragments and dust, and placed it gingerly on the counter. "This is from one of the last poor people who was down here," he said.