USS Enterprise sailor among victims
of Monday's airline crash in New York
By Sandra Jontz, Washington
bureau
ARLINGTON, Va. — A U.S. sailor is among the 260 people killed in
Monday’s American Airlines crash in New York City.
Ruben Rodriguez, 32, had just returned this weekend from an
eight-month deployment on the USS Enterprise, which delayed its return home to fight in
America’s war on terrorism.
The Enterprise had been on its way to homeport in Norfolk, Va., in
October, when the crew got orders to instead head to the Arabian Sea for the United
States’ bombing campaign against Afghanistan’s Taliban regime and the al-Qaida
terrorist network hiding in the country.
The sailor was an aviation boatswain who enlisted in the Navy in May
1992. He was from Brooklyn and had been on leave, heading to visit family in Santo Domingo
in the Dominican Republic, when American Airlines Flight 587 crashed.
There were 251 passengers and nine crewmembers aboard, according to
American Airlines. Preliminary reports said six people on the ground died when the
European-made Airbus A300 started raining engine parts in the Rockaways section of Queens.
The cause of the crash is still under investigation by the National
Transportation Safety Board, and officials so far labeled the crash an accident. If they
suspected a crime had been committed, the FBI would be the lead investigator.
Felipe Rodriguez said his younger brother, Ruben, stopped long enough
in New York to grab some belongings, then headed to the Dominican Republic for a reunion
with his wife and three young children.
“My brother’s 3-year-old son keeps saying to his mother,
‘When’s daddy coming home? Where’s daddy?’” Felipe Rodriguez
said. “All we want is the body back so we can mourn properly, and the truth.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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