Shiya Ribowsky spent years cataloging the dead after September 11, 2001. He handled more than 20,000 human remains recovered from Ground Zero. And nearly a quarter century later, the former New York City medicolegal death investigator is still waging a quiet battle against a single word he considers a desecration of the people who died that morning: "jumpers."
In a first-person account published by the New York Post, Ribowsky laid out the case he has been making for years. The roughly 200 people who fell or were forced from the upper floors of the World Trade Center towers did not commit suicide. They were murdered, he argues, and calling them "jumpers" distorts both the facts and the moral weight of what happened to them.
Ribowsky, who served as a supervising medicolegal investigator in the New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner, wrote that the term "jumpers" implies a voluntary act. That implication, he contended, is not just inaccurate but cruel to surviving families. It suggests their loved ones chose death rather than being killed by terrorists who hijacked commercial aircraft and crashed them into occupied buildings.
The distinction matters legally and personally. Ribowsky noted that the New York City Medical Examiner's Office classified every death at the World Trade Center on 9/11 as a homicide. That includes the people who fell from the towers. None were classified as suicides.
The official cause-of-death classification rests on a straightforward principle in forensic death investigation: the manner of death reflects the chain of events that led to it. The people trapped above the impact zones did not create the conditions that forced them to the windows. Al Qaeda terrorists did.
Ribowsky explained the reasoning in plain terms. When someone is pushed off a roof during a robbery, the death is a homicide, not a suicide, even though the victim technically fell. The same logic applies to the people in the Twin Towers. They were driven to the edges of the buildings by fire, smoke, and structural collapse caused by a terrorist attack. The proximate cause of their deaths was the attack itself.
He wrote that the people at the windows faced an impossible situation: unbearable heat and toxic smoke behind them, open air in front of them. Some may have lost consciousness from smoke inhalation and fallen. Others may have been pushed by the crowd pressing toward breathable air. Some may have made a final, desperate move. But none of them woke up that morning planning to die. The legal accountability for 9/11 remains a live issue, with victim families still pressing the courts to resolve liability claims that have stretched across nearly 25 years.
In every case, Ribowsky argued, the terrorists bear responsibility. Calling these people "jumpers" shifts the narrative away from the killers and onto the victims.
Ribowsky described the grueling work of the months and years that followed the attacks. The Office of Chief Medical Examiner undertook the largest forensic identification effort in American history. He personally oversaw the processing of remains, working to match fragments to names so that families could bury their dead.
That work gave him a perspective most commentators lack. He saw what fire, jet fuel, and structural collapse did to human bodies. He reviewed the evidence that informed each death certificate. And he watched as media shorthand reduced the people who fell from the towers to a single misleading label.
The label stuck. News coverage, documentaries, and popular accounts have used "jumpers" for decades. Ribowsky wrote that each use of the word reopens a wound for families who already endured the worst day of their lives. Some families, he noted, have told him they felt their loved ones were being blamed for their own deaths.
The fight over terminology is not academic. In legal contexts, the distinction between homicide and suicide can affect insurance payouts, estate proceedings, and eligibility for victim compensation funds. Ribowsky did not detail specific cases where the "jumper" label caused financial harm, but the structural risk is clear: a suicide classification carries different legal consequences than a homicide classification.
The New York City Medical Examiner's Office settled the question on the official record. Every death certificate from the World Trade Center attacks lists the manner of death as homicide. But official records do not always control public perception. The word "jumper" persists in casual conversation, in media archives, and in the cultural memory of the attacks. The broader question of how America honors and protects 9/11 victims has surfaced in other contexts, including when a New York assemblyman drew criticism for giving a 9/11 memorial pen to a former al Qaeda detainee's lawyer.
Ribowsky's argument is that language shapes understanding. If the public thinks of the people who fell as "jumpers," it subtly reframes 9/11 as a tragedy in which some victims made a grim choice. If the public understands them as murder victims, the frame stays where it belongs: on the terrorists who attacked the United States.
The approximately 200 people who fell from the towers were office workers, financial analysts, restaurant employees, and visitors. They were in the wrong place because terrorists put them there. Ribowsky emphasized that these were not abstractions or statistics. They were individuals with families who have spent more than two decades grieving under the additional weight of a misleading word.
He wrote that he has spoken to families who avoid watching documentaries about 9/11 because they cannot bear to hear the term. Some have told him they feel the word erases the crime committed against their loved ones. For these families, the fight over a single word is deeply personal.
The ongoing legal proceedings surrounding 9/11 accountability reinforce how much the details still matter. The military commission case against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-described mastermind of the attacks, has dragged on for years, with procedural disputes and judicial rulings continuing to delay resolution.
Ribowsky's argument is not complicated. He is asking the public, the media, and anyone who discusses 9/11 to stop using a word that mischaracterizes how nearly 200 people died. He is asking them to use language that reflects the legal and moral reality: these people were killed by terrorists.
He acknowledged that changing entrenched language is difficult. The word "jumper" is embedded in two decades of coverage and conversation. But he maintained that accuracy demands the effort, and that the families of the dead deserve it.
The broader fight to preserve the truth of what happened on September 11 extends well beyond vocabulary. Members of Congress have continued to grapple with the attack's legacy, from terror survivors pressing lawmakers on victim compensation to intelligence officials warning about new and evolving threats to the homeland.
Ribowsky closed with a simple point. The people who fell from the World Trade Center did not jump. They were pushed by fire, smoke, and terror. They were murdered. And the least the living can do is say so.
Nearly 25 years after the towers fell, the smallest details still carry weight. A word on a death certificate. A label in a headline. The difference between a victim and a choice. Getting the language right will not bring anyone back. But it draws the line where it belongs: between the innocent and the guilty.
