Agence France-Presse
Published: Saturday January 17, 2009
WASHINGTON (AFP) – A 45-year-old man who died of cancer due to breathing
in toxic dust following the collapse of the World Trade Center on September
11, 2001 has become the latest addition to the attacks’ overall toll.
Leon Bernard Heyward, 45, died on October 18, 2008 from "lymphoma complicating
sarcoidosis," bringing the overall death toll from the attacks to 2,752,
the New York City medical examiner’s office said.
Heyward’s is the second name to be added to the list in the years following
the attacks. Officials in May 2007 also linked the death of Felicia Dunn-Jones
five years earlier to dust she inhaled at the World Trade Center site.
The cause of death for all the official victims of the attacks is homicide,
said medical examiner’s spokeswoman Ellen Borakove.
"We are not saying that other people are linked or not linked," said
Borakove, referring to the hundreds of other emergency personnel stricken with
health problems from working at the collapse site in the weeks and months after
the attacks.
"In order to be classified as a homicide the person had to have been there
at the time the towers collapsed … not just subsequently working there,"
added Borakove.