Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Ex-WTC firefighter on trial

From: Marcelrf <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2004 03:46:09 -0500

Ex-WTC firefighter on trial
The Associated Press
February 24, 2004, 4:35 PM EST

A retired firefighter accused of stealing a wedding photo, a smashed
fire department radio and other items from the shambles of ground zero
"came to help" in the post-Sept. 11 cleanup but instead became a
souvenir hunter and boasted about it, a prosecutor said Tuesday.

Samuel Brandon collected items that had "far greater personal and
emotional value to their owners, and he said as much," Assistant
District Attorney Judy Salwen said at the opening of Brandon's trial in
Manhattan criminal court.
The prosecutor said Brandon "bragged to anyone who would listen, and his
bragging was his undoing." Brandon, 61, who retired from the fire
department in 1984, is charged with 11 misdemeanors, each punishable by
a year in jail, for stealing artifacts while a volunteer recovery worker
at the World Trade Center site in 2002.

He kept a damaged Motorola walkie-talkie of the type used by
firefighters, seven ID cards -- two belonging to people killed in the
Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack -- a photo of an unidentified couple at
their wedding, a key and a quarter, authorities contend.

Defense attorney Ron Kliegerman said that the items gathered by Brandon
were essentially worthless and that the theft charges were based on "an
appeal to people's emotions" rather than facts or solid evidence.
"There certainly isn't much evidence in this case," he said outside the
courtroom.

Some survivors of World Trade Center victims were angered by
Kliegerman's similar remarks earlier.
"This guy (Brandon) is worthless ... a disgrace to whatever uniform he
used to wear," Monica Gabrielle, whose husband, an insurance executive,
died in the collapse of the south tower, told the Daily News.

Brandon was arrested in June 2002 after a prospective buyer of his home
in Ellenburg, N.Y., saw a framed photo of him standing in the trade
center wreckage holding what appeared to be a human hip bone and told
authorities.

Detective John Curnyn, of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey,
which owns the trade center site, testified that state police later sent
two undercover detectives to Brandon's home, masquerading as a couple
looking to buy a house. Brandon showed them the radio and the picture,
but they did not see the hip bone, he said.

Kliegerman, the defense attorney, said, "He did not take the hip bone,
and he never had it at his house." He said the bone apparently was
tagged and turned over to the medical examiner's office along with
thousands of other remains of the more than 2,700 people who perished in
the hijacked jetliner attacks on the twin towers.

Police using a search warrant later found the other items at Brandon's
home, Curnyn told the jury of four men and two women.
In an earlier deposition, he said Brandon admitted that he had kept
souvenirs from ground zero even though he had no authority to do so and
had given some away.

The ID cards included those of a Port Authority employee and a Cantor
Fitzgerald brokerage employee who perished in the attack.

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/newyork/nyc-theft0225,0,7609161.story?coll=ny-nynews-headlines

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