Authorities are asking the public to help them find the person responsible for stealing two historic stones from a 9/11 memorial site in North Texas earlier this week.
Officers with the Grapevine Police Department responded to the 9/11 Flight Crew Memorial in the 1000 block of Texan Trail after reports of missing items.
Upon arrival, police learned that a stone from the Flight 93 crash site in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and the limestone fragment from the Pentagon's impact zone were missing from the enclosures at the memorial.
Memorial stones stolen from 9/11 tribute site in North Texas
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"I couldn’t believe it. Who would do that? Anybody who was here on September 11 wouldn’t be doing that. I think this was some nut job," said Joe Luccioni.
Back in 2002, Luccioni joined several other North Texans in creating a foundation to raise money for a local memorial to honor the flight crews killed on 9/11.
He encouraged the group to add statues and plaques, also naming the police officers and firefighters who were killed that day.
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His soon-to-be son-in-law, Michael Lynch, was one of the 343 firefighters killed at the World Trade Center as he rushed in to help before the towers collapsed.
Twice a week, Luccioni visits the memorial to remember Lynch and the others killed that day.
“This is a sacred site. People come here, and they sit here, and they pray, and they thank God for their being here," he said.
Grapevine detectives said they are trying to verify a timeline for when the stones were last confirmed inside the memorial enclosures. At the same time, they are planning to look at any surveillance video in the vicinity.
"These stones are a vital piece of history that allows us to remember and pay tribute to the flight crew members and all who were lost on September 11, 2001," the police department said in a press release on Wednesday.
The City of Grapevine maintains the 9/11 Flight Crew Memorial.
Anyone with information about the stolen Memorial stones is urged to contact Sergeant Oscar Ramirez at oramirez@grapevinetexas.gov.
