9/11: Who are the five Argentines who died in the attack on the Twin Towers? | the Chronicle

It looks like it was yesterday but 20 years have passed since one of mankind’s most terrible and media attacks: these are the four planes that fell on American soil and took off thousands of victims, injuries and unhealed scars to date.

Among those thousands of victims were five Argentinian citizens (a nurse, a firefighter and three businessmen), who were sadly in the wrong place and at the wrong time, as they were part of the tragedy that took place. marked a before and after for the whole world.

One of them was Mario santoro, a Rosario who worked as a paramedic in New York City, was on leave the day of the attack, but when he saw one of the two towers burn from the balcony of his house, he told his wife he should go to the scene of the tragedy: “I’m going, they’ll need me.

Santoro was in a relationship with an American, Leonor, and had a daughter, Sofia, after having lived very young in this city where he had arrived with his parents.

Another Argentinian who lost his life trying to help the victims was Sergio Villanueva, firefighter born in Bahía Blanca, died at the age of 33.

By 1992 Villanueva had joined the New York Police Department and seven years later he became a firefighter. I had committed to Tanya Béjasa and was known in his entourage by the nickname of “Grandpa” (Grandpa).

He had finished his shift at 8 a.m., just 45 minutes before an American Airlines plane crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, and then entered the same building shortly after the second plane will hit the south tower.

The former mayor of New York, Michael bloomberg, referred to Villanueva at the time: “There are a handful of people who were born to serve and lead by example. Sergio was one of them.”

In addition, Hofstra University in New York now has the so-called “Villanueva scholarship” in honor of his name, to help student-athletes complete their university education.

Gabriela tailor, a 33-year-old psychologist, was visiting for a meeting at the Twin Towers. Sadly, she was the first Argentina identified on the deceased list. Born in the Caballito district, he moved with his family to New York at the age of 6 and in the Big Apple, he had developed his professional career in a software company called Sybase.

He worked in an office nine blocks from the World Trade Center complex, but that morning was on the 106th floor of one of the towers during a trade show of your company.

Waisman contacted his family by phone, who watched the attack on TV: “She was scared, she said there was a lot of smoke and she was having trouble breathing”, story Armando, his father. “At the last call, she said she couldn’t breathe. She cried a lot. We couldn’t hear her anymore”, Waisman said.

Another Argentinian who died on September 11 was Pedro Grehan, who had his office in one of the World Trade Center towers. Born in 1965 in San Isidro in 1997, he decided to go to New York to try his luck, after remaining unemployed, married and father of three children.

After a few years, Grehan established himself as a financial analyst for Cantor Fitzgerald and worked daily inside the towers. He arrived shortly after 6:30 a.m. at his work desk. A few hours later, the first plane would hit a few floors below where it was, inside the north tower.

His mother, Ines OteizaHe claimed to have seen his son lean out of a window in a photo from an American newspaper and he said Pedro was one of the hundreds who jumped into the void before the two towers collapsed. Corn His body has never been found.

The name of the fifth deceased, identified in 2009, was called Guillaume Alexandre Chalcoff. He was a 41-year-old businessman who had obtained American citizenship shortly before the attack, for which he had been registered as a local victim. Chalcoff was the president of Accutek Information Systems, a contracting company with offices located elsewhere in the city.