- 5-foot piece of landing gear from one of the planes from 9/11 was discovered just blocks from Ground Zero
- Found near 51 Park Place, the site of the Islamic center Park51
- Lawyer for mosque developer calls the part discovery a 'gimmick'
- Police probing whether the piece was intentionally planted by opponents to the Islamic community center
- Area is being treated like a crime scene as investigators search for human remains
© NYPD
Found: part of a landing gear from one of the 9/11 planes was discovered wedged between buildings with a mysterious rope around it
Found: part of a landing gear from one of the 9/11 planes was discovered wedged between buildings with a mysterious rope around it
The airplane part was discovered wedged between 51 Park Place, the site of the proposed 13-story Islamic cultural center Park51, and 50 Murray Street, a luxury apartment building in TriBeCa.
Now a lawyer for the proposed religious site has suggested to the New York Post that the piece was intentionally placed near the center as part of a 'gimmick.'
After news emerged this week about the discovery of the part, a lawyer for Park51 called the find a 'gimmick' organized by those who seek to block the center's development.
'I don't believe it for one minute,' said Adam Leitman Bailey, the lawyer for the project's lead developer, Sharif El-Gamal, in comments tothe Post.
'I think this is a prank, and there's no way this all of a sudden showed up. It's hard to believe they now have found evidence that wasn't put there recently.'
New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said that police would consider the possibility that the part had intentionally been situated between the two buildings.
'We are also looking at the possibility that it was lowered by a rope.. We are not ruling it out ... there's a rope that is intertwined in the part itself,' he told reporters at a press conference late on Friday.
The piece was discovered on Wednesday, 11 years after the terrorist attacks on September 11 when two Boeing 767s, American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175, crashed into the World Trade Center Twin Towers around 9:00am.
Within two hours of the attack, both towers collapsed - killing 2,753 people in New York.
But the developer himself tried to downplay the possible controversy over the part's proximity to the religious center.
'Adam Leitman Bailey has no authority to speak on behalf of Sharif El-Gamal, Soho Properties or Park51,' a spokesman for El-Gamal said.
'We are cooperating fully with the appropriate authorities to make sure this piece of evidence is removed with care as quickly and effectively as possible.'
The plans for Park51 have attracted considerable attention given the center's location in the neighborhood near Ground Zero.
When plans for the center became public in 2010, opponents said they didn't want a mosque so close to where Islamic extremists attacked, but supporters said the center would promote harmony between Muslims and followers of other faiths.
The current building that stands at the location is from the 1850s. It had been previously owned by Burlington Coat Factory before it was damaged in the September 11 attacks.
The developer plans to construct a 13-story, 4,000-square-foot center with a 500-seat auditorium, theater, performing arts a fitness center and swimming pool among the amenities. Construction costs have been estimated to top $100 million.
The prayer space for the Muslim community would accommodate 1,000 - 2,000 people.
But the plans sparked outrage from the families of 9/11 victims and the developer has since pared down the development.
In September 2011, the renovated building was opened to the public. The space remains under renovation.
The space now features a prayer center and space for artistic events and lectures but not the ambitious fitness and recreation center the developer had hoped to rival the 92 Street Y, on the Upper East Side.
The twisted metal part - jammed in an 18-inch-wide, trash-laden passageway between the buildings - has cables and levers on it and is about 5 feet high, 17 inches wide and 4 feet long, police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said Friday.
'It's a manifestation of a horrific terrorist act a block and a half away from where we stand,' he said after visiting the alley.
Commissioner Kelly said in a news conference on Friday that surveyors were working in the narrow space on Wednesday when they came across an unidentified mechanical part.
Police received a report about the discovery, but officers who responded were not sure what the large piece of metal was resting in a very confined space littered with debris.
The FBI, the National Transportation Safety Board and the Medical Examiner's Office were notified.
Pilots who were consulted ruled that the large piece of steel measuring 5 feet by 4 feet by 17 inches at one time was part of a plane's landing gear.
Mystery: Commissioner Kelly (pictured) told reporters a rope was wrapped around the gear and that aspect of the find would be investigated
Some answers: Officials held a press conference in front of the buildings (pictured) where the gear was found
Kelly said that mechanical part was wedged in narrow space measuring about 18 inches, and according to Kelly, a rope could be seen intertwined with the steel.
The commissioner noted that a piece of rope intertwined with the part looks like a broken pulley that may have come down from the roof of the Islamic community center.
Police officers cordoned off the section of Park Place surrounding the site of the discovery located inside a former Burlington Coat Factory department store, which was controversially turned into an Islamic center and mosque just blocks away from the World Trade Center site.
NYPD deputy commissioner Paul Browne told CBS radio Friday afternoon, 'No, it has not been known that its been there,' Browne said, denying that the building owners were aware that their back alley contained a piece of evidence from the 2001 terrorist attack.
'It was just only recently observed because it's wedged between a very narrow space between the rears of two buildings that almost touch.'
The gear has a serial number visible next to the word 'Boeing.'
But aviation experts said on Saturday that the part cannot be traced to a specific plane used in the 9/11 attacks.
The number - BOEING CSTG 65B84045 - is a casting number so it isn't specific to one particular plane, Alan Lery of Turbo Resources International, Inc., an Arizona aircraft parts reseller, told the Post.
'Sometimes the airlines track every single part number that comes with the plane, but not likely this, he said.
Chuck Horning of Embry-Riddle Aviation University in Florida, also told the Post that the number cannot be traced.
'I would think that it will be difficult to determine specifically which aircraft the assembly came from,' Horning said.
'Being that both aircraft [in the World Trade Center attacks] were B767-200, they both likely had components with the same casting number,' he added.
It is unclear which of the two planes the new-found part belonged to, as both were Boeing aircrafts.
Kelly said that on Monday, the medical examiner will investigate to determine if there are any human remains at the site, and it will then be determined how to move the plane remnants.
'It's a manifestation of a horrific terrorist act,' Kelly said, adding that this latest discovery may bring up difficult memories for the families of the victims.
5-feet: The chunk found Wednesday was 5-feet long and police say they've secured the area, pictured, 'like a crime scene'
Van Vanable, 63, a construction worker with Benson Industry Local 580, has been working on the yet-to-be completed Freedom Tower just a few blocks away.
On Friday, he was sitting on a bench in his red work helmet just steps away from the mosque building, next door to the Dakota Roadhouse bar, when he says police officers converged on the area.
'It's an amazing situation,' Vanable said of the discovery made nearly 12 years after the 9/11 attacks.
The 63-year-ld construction worker, who lives in Harlem, came to Ground Zero a week after the tragedy and joined the massive cleanup effort hauling away debris. Speaking to MailOnline, Vanable said he is not surprised by the find.
The inspectors were the ones to call police and since that call, the NYPD has secured the scene as if it were a crime scene in order to document it and catalog evidence.
'We're going to treat this as a crime scene for the next week at least,' Browne said.
'The medical examiner is an important part of the investigation to first see if there's any contamination of the soil that makes it any health safety on the soil below it on the ground. And then they will then make a determination, the office of the medical examiner, as to whether to sift for any possible human remains that might be associated with this find,' Browne said.
that this is a part of either 9-11 aircraft with only a casting mark to examine, and part as large as this lying on a roof top would surely have been visible from/by the many helicopters hovering over the scene for days/weeks after the event. Anyone bought some landing-gear from an aircraft breakers recently?