A man who witnessed the 9/11 attack in Washington DC said his wife back in Galway was “speechless” when he told her what he had just seen.
US citizen Eric was in the American capital and was staying in a hotel across from the White House.
On Lunchtime Live, he described what he witnessed as “hard to forget” and something that he can still see “fresh in my mind”.
“While the planes were crashing into the two towers, I was talking to my wife in Tuam,” he recalled.
“As I'm talking to her, I just tell her, ‘Oh my God, here comes one this way.’
“I look forward and there's a plane coming in towards the hotel where I'm at and just skimming the trees with the engines full on.
“As it approached the White House, it just veered to its right a little bit and then I saw it go down and hit the Pentagon and everything went up in flames there.”
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While it took a lot of people by surprise, Eric added that the response of the US military was “very, very rapid”.
“It took maybe 10, 15 minutes [and] the skies over Washington DC were full of F-16 fighter jets, fully armed with missiles,” he said.
“Then I saw all the hotels below me, the rooms starting filling up with snipers going on in the four corners of the hotel.”
Back home in Galway, however, Eric’s wife was shocked to hear about what her husband had witnessed.
“I think it was just a bit of speechlessness on her part,” he said.
“Because when you say, ‘Here comes one this way’ - what do you say?”
Main image: The Pentagon on 9/11. Picture by: Alamy.com.
