{"id":341811,"date":"2026-09-09T14:06:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T14:06:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/341811\/"},"modified":"2026-09-09T14:06:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T14:06:10","slug":"9-11-25-years-later-photojournalist-eric-oconnell-recalls-being-thrust-into-horror-and-history-after-living-just-a-week-in-nyc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/341811\/","title":{"rendered":"9\/11 25 Years Later: Photojournalist Eric O\u2019Connell recalls being thrust into horror and history after living just a week in NYC"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric O\u2019Connell<\/a> had been living in his apartment on Pearl Street in Lower Manhattan, next to historic Fraunces Tavern, for less than a week when the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks<\/a> struck the city.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As a 33-year-old photojournalist and commercial photographer at that time, he had been working in various parts of the country, teaching and photographing for magazines and advertising stock. Because New York City is the American center of photojournalism, it was only natural for O\u2019Connell to make a new home here.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Like many others, O\u2019Connell recalls hearing about the first attack on the World Trade Center that day while watching television.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the first plane hit the World Trade Center, I saw it on the news \u2013 Matt Lauer and Katic Couric were preempted and they showed a picture of the building on fire (the north tower) \u2013 may be a Cessna hit it and I said, \u2018ok, this is not an accident and my training kicked in,\u2019\u201d O\u2019Connell said from his current home in San Antonio in an interview with this reporter, who had spoken to him for the first time in 25 years. \u201cI grabbed my cameras and ran out the door.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when he said the metal doors on the building shook; he didn\u2019t realize it at that moment, but that was when the second plane had hit the south tower. \u201cIt felt like an earthquake,\u201d he recalled.<\/p>\n

Despite having moved to NYC in July, O\u2019Connell was not too familiar with the city. He had just spent July teaching in Italy and all of August in New Mexico teaching art. Nevertheless, he made his way to the World Trade Center, running down Broadway to Liberty Street, passing the black tombstone-like Deutsche Bank building.<\/p>\n

Then O\u2019Connell came upon the grotesque scene of horror: A piece of plane fuselage on a parking lot across from the south tower. A chunk of steel from the plane pierced the hood of a car. Gruesome body parts were scattered.<\/p>\n

Then came the unthinkable: Jumpers.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThey (firefighters) were coming across the parking lot, and then I heard it. I saw something out of corner of eye; it finally registered that a body was falling,\u201d O\u2019Connell recalled. \u201cThen I saw these guys running. Firefighters were dragging him, a firefighter hit by debris. I didn\u2019t know at the time that a body had hit him.\u201d<\/p>\n

O\u2019Connell had witnessed what this reporter had seen while covering that fateful morning: Firefighter Danny Suhr struck by a jumper. He ran around the corner and snapped a picture of him being removed in front of 90 West St. He then shot a few frames of St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was standing on the corner (of Liberty Street) where there was scaffolding and I thought, \u2018Okay, this is barely safe \u2013 things were falling out of the sky,\u2019\u201d he recalled. \u201cI took a picture of the church from the corner, and my instinct was that there was extreme danger. There were two cops there, one a female, and we didn\u2019t know where to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AirplaneAirplane landing gear near Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church with the World Trade Center tower in background during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The church would be destroyed in the collapse of the Twin Towers.Public domain<\/p>\n

Seconds later, O\u2019Connell\u2019s gut instinct proved too horrifically true. The south tower began to collapse.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen we heard the rumble; we knew the building was falling and someone yelled, \u2018Run!\u2019\u201d O\u2019Connell recalled. \u201cThe female cop screamed, \u2018In here!\u2019 I chose to dive in, turned left and curled up in a ball.\u201d<\/p>\n

O\u2019Connell had grown up in the southwest U.S., where his community sometimes suffered tornadoes. As the south tower fell, he remembered the advice his mother gave him when a twister approached: Get into the corner.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI headed to the wall, and the impact threw me in the air,\u201d he recalled. \u201cI remember thinking to myself, \u2018Please let it be quick.’\u201d\n<\/p>\n

As soon as the rumble of the collapse stopped, \u201conly 10 seconds, I was sitting on my ankles with knees bent thinking maybe the building is on fire and I might die from the smoke,\u201d he said. \u201cI felt like I had three inches of talcum powder on my face. Then I heard a woman\u2019s voice say, \u201cWe can get out here.\u2019 I also heard another voice say, \u2018Over here.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

He could not tell where the doorway was at first, the entrance to Liberty Street completely blocked by debris. Instinctively, he unscrewed the dust-filled filter from his camera and took a few photos, capturing a female police officer and in the background with this reporter.\u201d<\/p>\n

Once outside of the building, the street was dark and filled with dust. He made an important life choice.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cMy early influences were all those journalism guys, like James Nachway and Anthony Suau (both famed war photographers), and I thought, \u2018I\u2019m not a Nachway or a Suau \u2013 I\u2019m not a war photog,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cSo I had a choice to turn right or left, and I turned left. I didn\u2019t want to be one of those people.\u201d<\/p>\n

O\u2019Connell then photographed a man in a dust-coated business suit. He took a picture of O\u2019Connell with an instant camera next to an MTA bus. Then he made a joke that \u201cdisgusted\u201d O\u2019Connell. \u201cWho do we sue?\u201d the man had quipped.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Connell kept walking south and ran into an abandoned hot dog cart.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI grabbed a water and as soon as I did, a different female cop put her hand on my shoulder, pulled me towards her and said, \u2018you need to wash your face,\u2019 so she dragged me to a water fountain, and she pressed the button for me. She then disappeared and I kept walking.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said a few guys had a transistor radio on top of car, listening to the news. He said he thought about the movie \u201cRed Dawn,\u201d and thought about the country being under attack as happened in the film.<\/p>\n

By the time he made it to Battery Park, he turned back when he heard another rumble, and \u201cI saw an enormous cloud of dust and smoke,\u201d the collapse of the north tower.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI started to understand what may have happened, but I just didn\u2019t know what to do so I went home, (to his apartment on Pearl Street) and I saw the pictures on television. I took my clothes off. I knew my life had changed forever,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

After cleaning up, he went back out and walked a woman across the Brooklyn Bridge; \u201cshe was terrified to walk across,\u201d O\u2019Connell recalled. He went to a friend\u2019s house in Brooklyn to get food and some sleep.<\/p>\n

\u201cI tried to sleep but I kept waking up because I was having a nightmare of falling \u2013 I\u2019d wake up sweating,\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n

He brought his processed film to Time Magazine the next day, but because he had shot it on black-and-white film, they weren\u2019t interested. He later sold the images to CNN and \u201c60 Minutes\u201d and gave and St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church \u2014 which had been destroyed in the Twin Towers\u2019 collapse \u2014 a photo to help them raise money to rebuild.<\/p>\n

\"\"Eric O\u2019Connell showing photos in an exhibit in 2021 for the 20th anniversary of 9\/11. Photo shows last picture of the Greek Orthodox Church crushed in the collapse. (Photo Courtesy of Eric O\u2019Connell)<\/p>\n

O\u2019Connell said he sometimes regrets not having done more on that \u201chistoric moment.\u201d But he was also suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder that so many also experienced. He never returned to the site: \u201cI couldn\u2019t even go down there.\u201d He said he didn\u2019t leave Manhattan for a year.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was scared to leave \u2013 didn\u2019t think I could come back \u2013 I was in a red zone, and so when I finally did leave, I\u2019d make sure to take my insurance card, or utility bill, to show where I lived. I\u00a0was just angry about stuff \u2013 I had just moved to New York City,\u201d he said. \u201cI chose to turn my back on it; I didn\u2019t have that connection to all those people \u2013 I only had a few friends.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now living in San Antonio, he continues to work as a photographer, but also works part-time for Parks and Recreation and rides his bike on the greenways, \u201clike the West Side Highway along the river.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the guys he rides with is a retired NYPD officer, \u201cthe only person he knows who speaks about 9\/11.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eric O\u2019Connell had been living in his apartment on Pearl Street in Lower Manhattan, next to historic Fraunces…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":341812,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[5301,128253,128254,128255,194,41595,359,9,24,63,103,53694,128256,84426,128137,134,136,135,7037],"class_list":["post-341811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-staten-island","tag-9-11","tag-9-11-photography","tag-danny-suhr","tag-eric-oconnell","tag-fdny","tag-fraunces-tavern","tag-lower-manhattan","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-nypd","tag-photojournalism","tag-saint-nicholas-greek-orthodox-church","tag-september-11-attacks","tag-september-11-remembrance","tag-staten-island","tag-staten-island-headlines","tag-staten-island-news","tag-world-trade-center"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=341811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/341812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}