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| Fifth Column |
| Hoax call dashes hope |
| 2001-09-18 |
For three days, Bill and Elma Sugra had been holding out hope for news of their son, Bill, 30, who had been in One World Trade Center when the plane hit last Tuesday. At 12:39 p.m. Friday, the phone rang in the Sugras' Allentown, Pa., home and a woman on the other end said she was a nurse at New York General Hospital. "My daughter handed the phone to my husband and then the woman said Bill was at the hospital with two broken arms, two broken legs, crushed ribs and a blood clot, and he is in critical condition and in surgery," said his mother. "She said to rush to the hospital. We were jumping up and down and saying our miracle had happened, and we were laughing and crying and hugging ourselves." But before they started off for New York City, which is about an hour away, the Sugras tried to call the hospital. There was no listing for any New York General. Suspicious, they checked "call return" on their phone and figured out that the call had come from the 610 area code, their area code, and not from New York City. It was then they realized that the call had been a hoax. "Words can't describe what we went through when we learned that," said Elma Sugra. "We had been sitting around since Tuesday waiting to get that call." The Sugras have notified local police and have been reassured that every effort will be made to locate the caller. Their son works for eSpeed, the electronic trading unit of the U.S. brokerage firm Cantor Fitzgerald. His office was on the 103rd floor of the north tower, which was hit at 8:48 a.m. last Tuesday. About 700 Cantor Fitzgerald employees are missing. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |