NY NY - Sneha Ann Philip, 31, New York City, 10 Sep 2001

[Ksprincess2]

She cannot possibly be practicing medicine anywhere in the civilized world. There are such lengthy stringent licensing and credentialing requirements it would be impossible to fly under that particular radar.

I had forgotten about this case but remember that her being a Physician is the number 1 reason I don't think she voluntarily disappeared. There's no way she could move, change her name and start a new life because she could never get credentialed again. I suppose she could not be working as a physician but despite everything else she sounds like she was very dedicated to her job. I think she went missing the night of September 10th/ early morning of the 11th, maybe kidnapped and murdered walking home but the timing of 9/11 didn't allow for a real investigation. Or maybe being the dedicated physician she was she did respond to the scene on her way home and died there but I don't think so.

 

[Copper]

I mean did her family get money from the victims fund???

No. By the time Sneha was declared an official victim, the fund was already spent.

 

[Fukiyama]

I will recap my own opinion.

In the documentary 9/11 by the two Naudet brothers, after the planes hit, the second brother was still at the firehouse where he and his brother had been embedded to document the life of a probationary firefighter. The second brother headed off for the WTC to try to find his brother who had been with the first responders. The brothers had been given full credentials by the fire department to go anywhere and film any fire department operations for their documentary. When the second brother was stopped by law enforcement, he showed the LEO the paperwork, who replied by telling him to "get the #^@% out of there."

With this in mind, I think it is reasonable to theorize that one doctor with a hospital ID badge was not going to get down to the WTC by herself to provide first aid. I think she would have been told to go to the staging area where EMS had gathered to deal with mass casualties.

 

[Ksprincess2]

I will recap my own opinion.

In the documentary 9/11 by the two Naudet brothers, after the planes hit, the second brother was still at the firehouse where he and his brother had been embedded to document the life of a probationary firefighter. The second brother headed off for the WTC to try to find his brother who had been with the first responders. The brothers had been given full credentials by the fire department to go anywhere and film any fire department operations for their documentary. When the second brother was stopped by law enforcement, he showed the LEO the paperwork, who replied by telling him to "get the #^@% out of there."

With this in mind, I think it is reasonable to theorize that one doctor with a hospital ID badge was not going to get down to the WTC by herself to provide first aid. I think she would have been told to go to the staging area where EMS had gathered to deal with mass casualties.

This is an excellent post. You are absolutely right, in a mass casualty situation it can become even more chaotic if there are too many responders without specific roles and crowd control is important. If Sneha had wanted to help she probably would have headed to the hospital she worked at, St. Vincent's which was one of many hospitals where 9/11 victims were taken for treatment.

I feel like she was not still alive at the time of the attacks though or no matter what she was doing she would have called family and friends to check in as so many other people did that morning.

 

[Stella]

I just read that Sneha was wearing her wedding minnu, an elaborate gold necklace, when she was last seen. Surely that would've turned up among all the personal jewelry items found in the rubble.

 

[Ozoner]

I think I will leave her case on my site for now. If a member of her family contacts me and asks me to remove it, I will do so. (I would do the same with any other case, if a family member requested it.) But leaving Sneha's case up for now certainly can't hurt and might help.

I'm disappointed to read that you would remove a victim's profile at the request of family members. I thought that your site existed to give a voice to the victims themselves. In some cases family members could be responsible for a person's disappearance.

You mean at the doors of the Towers themselves?

The Naudet brother was stopped long before he got near the WTC complex. NYPD and other law enforcement officials set up a perimeter to keep people away.

The person that you're talking about arrived after LE had had time to set up a perimeter. Sneha was only a couple of blocks from the World Trade Center—close enough to have heard the impact of the first plane—and could have arrived at the site before any kind of perimeter was established
—
That said, I don't necessarily think that Sneha died that day. I think that she may well be alive.
—
I live in an area with a substantial East Indian American community, and I have known many women from that community (including some Malayalam-speaking Christian women like Sneha). The lives of single East Indian women are often controlled by their parents, especially their fathers, and even by their brothers.
It is not unusual for grown women in that community to be spanked or beaten by their fathers.
There is a great deal of pressure on East Indian women to marry young, and they are usually not free to choose whom to marry. Sneha made a courageous choice by marrying a non-Indian. Women in India have been murdered by their fathers for trying to marry outside of their castes. That Sneha was able to marry a non-Indian would suggest that her family was more progressive than most, but her position in that community would nevertheless have been extremely difficult if she had chosen to end her marriage and come out as lesbian or bisexual.
Divorce does occur in that community, but it is highly stigmatized, and there is no acceptance of homosexuality or lesbianism.
-
I'm not saying that Sneha ran away to start a new life—I hope she did—but people should consider the community she was from as a backdrop before they write off the possibility that she might have run away.

 

[Ozoner]

I had forgotten about this case but remember that her being a Physician is the number 1 reason I don't think she voluntarily disappeared. There's no way she could move, change her name and start a new life because she could never get credentialed again. I suppose she could not be working as a physician but despite everything else she sounds like she was very dedicated to her job. I think she went missing the night of September 10th/ early morning of the 11th, maybe kidnapped and murdered walking home but the timing of 9/11 didn't allow for a real investigation. Or maybe being the dedicated physician she was she did respond to the scene on her way home and died there but I don't think so.

You're missing a couple of main points.
1) She had been fired from one internship and suspended from the second one. Her career as a doctor was basically over.
2) It sounds like she never really wanted to be a doctor anyway.

 

[Panhypopit]

I was downtown for 9/11 and I had friends in tower 2 and tower 5. I was on Wall Street. I commuted through the towers via the path train daily, like I did that day, and was there. I was walking to my desk when the first plane hit, and we were looking out the window at all the papers, confused. There was no parade. Parades don’t use full pieces of paper. Right away the phones and internet was sporadic at best.
One person reached her mom, and was told a small plane hit tower 1, and we all thought that was stupid as it is a big building and easy to miss... then we HEARD the plane hit tower two as the sound carried down Wall Street. We instantly knew it was on purpose and panic set it... swarms of people started to set of on the streets.

As it relates to this story, there is no way she could have entered the towers, the people I know in them were fighting to get out, literally fighting security to go down the stairs. They were told the building was secure and it would not fall down.

some I know got out, some did not. But it was chaos that day, literally the streets were full. It was midnight dark when each building fell. The debris was so thick, it was hard to walk. The police came on a PA system, yelled we had to leave, run run north and we were given a wet paper towel as we filed out into white snow into crowds of people... it smelled awful. I managed to get on a ferry, and get to NJ... some of my friends took days to get home. I got home that night, but I had to walk miles to meet up with my husband.

I can’t watch any 9/11 related shows etc. I used to shop at century 21... it was very close by. Pretty much everything around there was destroyed. The smell of burning bodies mixed with fuel and the building was awful, and we were sent home if they failed to close the vents in time if the wind changed...

If she was near there, if was very confusing, very dangerous and who knows, things were falling, people went missing trying to help.

 

[Ozoner]

I was downtown for 9/11 and I had friends in tower 2 and tower 5. I was on Wall Street. I commuted through the towers via the path train daily, like I did that day, and was there. I was walking to my desk when the first plane hit, and we were looking out the window at all the papers, confused. There was no parade. Parades don’t use full pieces of paper. Right away the phones and internet was sporadic at best.
One person reached her mom, and was told a small plane hit tower 1, and we all thought that was stupid as it is a big building and easy to miss... then we HEARD the plane hit tower two as the sound carried down Wall Street. We instantly knew it was on purpose and panic set it... swarms of people started to set of on the streets.

As it relates to this story, there is no way she could have entered the towers, the people I know in them were fighting to get out, literally fighting security to go down the stairs. They were told the building was secure and it would not fall down.

some I know got out, some did not. But it was chaos that day, literally the streets were full. It was midnight dark when each building fell. The debris was so thick, it was hard to walk. The police came on a PA system, yelled we had to leave, run run north and we were given a wet paper towel as we filed out into white snow into crowds of people... it smelled awful. I managed to get on a ferry, and get to NJ... some of my friends took days to get home. I got home that night, but I had to walk miles to meet up with my husband.

I can’t watch any 9/11 related shows etc. I used to shop at century 21... it was very close by. Pretty much everything around there was destroyed. The smell of burning bodies mixed with fuel and the building was awful, and we were sent home if they failed to close the vents in time if the wind changed...

If she was near there, if was very confusing, very dangerous and who knows, things were falling, people went missing trying to help.

Since she couldn't have gotten into the towers, she could have only died on the ground or in one of the nearby buildings, right? Were there any people who were never identified who were thought to have died on the ground? I'm thinking that the answer is no. I know that many of the people on the planes, many Cantor-Fitzergerald people, etc., were never identified, but that is a little different. I don't think that Sneha could have died on 911 unless she was actually inside one of the towers, on or above one of the floors that were hit, and that seems pretty unlikely, especially if she was the woman seen on the security footage in the lobby of her apartment building, and I think that she was.

 

[Panhypopit]

Since she couldn't have gotten into the towers, she could have only died on the ground or in one of the nearby buildings, right? Were there any people who were never identified who were thought to have died on the ground? I'm thinking that the answer is no. I know that many of the people on the planes, many Cantor-Fitzergerald people, etc., were never identified, but that is a little different. I don't think that Sneha could have died on 911 unless she was actually inside one of the towers, on or above one of the floors that were hit, and that seems pretty unlikely, especially if she was the woman seen on the security footage in the lobby of her apartment building, and I think that she was.

Yes, yes there were! There were even people from my building who went to help. The debris pile was hundreds of feet high. It spread out over the streets. It sheered off the front of another building that was a block away (they covered it, it molded and had to be torn down) and other buildings were sheered off, damaged and we were in the debris field and we were not in visual of the buildings (the blocks down there are very windy and windy) but we had to walk to 6-8” of debris even on the west side. Papers, and lighter stuff made it out way, but desks and all were mid way. They did not show all that, or talk about it in the press, it was way too horrific.

 

[Ozoner]

Yes, yes there were! There were even people from my building who went to help. The debris pile was hundreds of feet high. It spread out over the streets. It sheered off the front of another building that was a block away (they covered it, it molded and had to be torn down) and other buildings were sheered off, damaged and we were in the debris field and we were not in visual of the buildings (the blocks down there are very windy and windy) but we had to walk to 6-8” of debris even on the west side. Papers, and lighter stuff made it out way, but desks and all were mid way. They did not show all that, or talk about it in the press, it was way too horrific.

There must have been a fair amount of amateur video footage shot that day. I would love to find out whether Sneha shows up on any of it.

If she was killed by debris, then she would most likely have been killed when the buildings fell, right? The north tower was hit at 8:46, but the south tower was the first to collapse, at 9:59. If Sneha was the woman seen of the apartment lobby video, and she headed to the WTC after hearing the impact, I think she would have arrived on the scene before 9:00 AM. That would mean that she would have been in the vicinity of the towers for about an hour.

Do you know of any list of 911 victims whose remains were never identified? I'm not sure whether that information has ever been released to the public.

 

[Panhypopit]

New York 9/11 victim's remains identified almost 18 years later
this is an older article, but it says 40% cannot be identified. The news only showed a view basically from NJ... I was working there, it was a heck hole, and even though I walked through there for years... parts were hard to recognize. The park was gone, the place where the vendors were, gone, the stores around, gone... the debris and streets were damaged and you had to stay blocks away just because that was working area, but the working area was the “spread” of all of the collapsed stuff. We were made to come back 10 days after, and we often went back to watch the people work and see if they could find people, to pray and cry... and see if we could find anyone... the streets were lines with missing sheets. Lined.

 

[Panhypopit]

9-11 Research: Missing Bodies
here is the official site, and the shape of the bodies

 

[Ozoner]

9-11 Research: Missing Bodies
here is the official site, and the shape of the bodies

It's a good resource. The one thing it doesn't get into is how many of the unidentified were thought to be outside the towers at the time of collapse. I suspect that the vast majority were trapped on the upper floors of the buildings. I've never seen a list of the names of the unidentified victims.

 

[Panhypopit]

It's a good resource. The one thing it doesn't get into is how many of the unidentified were thought to be outside the towers at the time of collapse. I suspect that the vast majority were trapped on the upper floors of the buildings. I've never seen a list of the names of the unidentified victims.

You can’t know. That is what I am trying to say. People did run towards the towers to try to help. But it was like a bomb went off. So a 4-6 city block area (NYC blocks are fairly large, it is a brisk 2 minutes to pass one) were decimated. It was unprecedented, some people wanted to go over to just look, before the towers went... but literally the east side highway was loaded with not cars, but a sea of people swarming up and away. The streets were chaos. It was crazy... no one expected the hit, no one expected the towers to go down, and that area of Manhattan is loaded with people, both living areas, businesses and stores...

They will never know.

 

[joijoi12]

I just learned of this case and am fascinated. I do think that if Sneha wanted to start a new life- being in the WTC vicinity during 9/11 would be an opportune time to do so. But I am leaning towards the possibility that she was in the vicinity and very well could have gone to the site to assist- and probably perished in the collapse. While she was going through issues with her job, I just believe that medical staff/first responders are just most likely to to help, no matter the circumstance.

I do hope that we learn more about her case. Someone has to know where she was the night of the 10th into the 11th.

 

[Deleted member 287549]

Wow. Just heard about this old SP case, from the S12 UM segment & also some of the "Trace Evidence" podcast. Very poignant & unsettling, given that she "vanished" right before the 9/11 attacks & the search for her was complicated by the horrific events of that time period.

This is one of these few cases that has really gotten under my skin. Haven't done a lot of research on this yet, but here are some comments:

1) Yes, there's a chance she died as either a direct result of the 9/11 attacks, or the aftermath. Even 20 years later, I believe there are still people that are missing & are presumed still lost in the debris that occurred as a result of the attacks.

2) There's also a possibility she met with foul play the day before the attacks (9/10), and for whatever reason the body still hasn't been found.

3) Who was the female friend that SP was seen with at a clothing/shoe store on 9/10?! A store clerk saw them together. I wonder if authorities ever tried to track her down?! Probably not. And, without a name - it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack.

4) If SP had been injured (but not killed) during the 9/11 attacks, is it possible she experienced head trauma/amnesia as a result, which would explain why she didn't contact anyone?! However, if this had happened - you would think that a hospital, etc. would eventually have been able to track down her friends/family members - after all, it's been 20 years.

5) Conversely, if SP was planning on "starting a new life" somewhere & survived the 9/11 attacks, I find it unlikely that she wouldn't have eventually contacted those closest to her to at least let them know she was OK. Yes, she seemed to be having problems/issues prior to her disappearance. But, would she have left everything behind & not let anyone in her family/circle of friends know if she was alive or dead?! I guess it's possible, but I don't know how likely this would be.

 

[Stella]

If she had felt a lifetime of pressure from her family of Old World values and felt her marriage was a last ditch effort to deny her true sexuality and it had failed, I can understand why she would go deep underground and never contact any of them. She would feel free on one hand but deeply ashamed on the other. I don't think anymore that she is dead, just living a new life with a new love, perhaps working as a nurse/doctor practitioner in a doctor's office in another part of the country.

 

[Deleted member 287549]

If she had felt a lifetime of pressure from her family of Old World values and felt her marriage was a last ditch effort to deny her true sexuality and it had failed, I can understand why she would go deep underground and never contact any of them. She would feel free on one hand but deeply ashamed on the other. I don't think anymore that she is dead, just living a new life with a new love, perhaps working as a nurse/doctor practitioner in a doctor's office in another part of the country.

You're right about SP possibly wanting to escape her old life due to pressures/problems she was having in her personal/professional life. As I delve more into this case I agree it's possible she was feeling a lot of pressure that may have just boiled over - and resulted in her wanting to leave her life behind. For example, there are conflicting accounts on what happened the morning of 9/10 (the last day she was seen). Her husband mentioned that he last saw her in their apartment before he went to work. However, there is another account that she had to go to court that morning, and they had an argument there - and that's the last time they saw each other. I.e., apparently her work situation wasn't going well & it's also possible her marriage was failing, etc.

And, even if she had planned to "split town" (possibly with the woman she was seen with in the clothing/shoe store), the issue I have here is the timing. I.e., she didn't have much time left to successfully do this - unless she left NYC on 9/10. I.e., if she was still in NYC on 9/11 I think there's a good chance she may have been caught up in the chaos & horror that happened that day & that she's deceased as a result of this. I find this more likely than her successfully changing her identity & living a life somewhere else.

 

[killarney rose]

It’s not that easy to change your identity these days and to acquire credentials like hers in a new name. I’m not saying it’s impossible, just not likely. If she had done that successfully at the time, I think there is a chance she would’ve resurfaced for some reason in the time since. Whether by choice or by getting caught.