2015/03/24

Reading Eagle March 20, 2015: Remains of Carnegie Mellon grad, 9/11 victim at World Trade Center, are identified

A Carnegie Mellon University graduate is the latest victim whose remains have been identified in the 2001 World Trade Center attacks, moving the New York medical examiner’s office one step closer to its ultimate goal of putting a name to all of the tissue samples it has kept for years.

Matthew David Yarnell, a young New Jersey computer analyst who graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in 1997, was positively identified last week, said his mother, Michele Yarnell.

At this point, only about 60 percent of the World Trade Center remains have been identified, and many forensic experts believe it will be impossible to put a name to all of them. Still, new techniques are slowly adding verifications like Yarnell’s.

Just a year ago, medical examiner’s officials had told the family that tests had failed to find a match, Michele Yarnell said, but last week, they told her new techniques had yielded a success.

For her, the news carried no special emotional impact. “It hasn’t really changed anything. I still have the same feelings. We didn’t expect any different result. We knew that he was gone.”

While the examiner’s office would not comment on the specific tests used on Yarnell’s remains, forensic experts said the catastrophe had led to several new tools to make it easier to identify damaged tissue samples. more